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Errata

2009-01-04T01:37:47Z

Gobbag: /* Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition */

The following list provides '''errata''' for ''[[Against the Day]],'' indicating places where readers have found misspellings, punctuation gaffes or other similar errors. Please note that some of these "mistakes" may be deliberate stylistic choices on the author's part.

== Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition ==

[[Against the Day description|Front flap]]: "Nikolai" Tesla, elsewhere (and conventionally) "Nikola"

Copyright page line 1: "VIKING" (should be "PENGUIN PRESS")

Copyright page line 16: "Viking Penguin" (should be "Penguin Press")

Page 63 line 14 "Unless," Ed pointed out, ["]it ''is'' God."

Page 82 line 1 "richochets"

Page 82 line 30 "Cour d'Alene"

Page 87 line 12 "be" doubled

Page 87 line 31-32 "ridegerunning"

Page 92 line 15 "what" doubled

Page 116 line 39 "de[c]lared"

Page 202 line 32 "Didt'n" (possibly)

Pae 236 line 10: "Headingly" (should be "Headingley")

Page 236 line 38: "exhiliration"

Page 240 line 8 "Re[n]frew"

Page 248 line 18: ''Culo'',[']"

Page 254 line 31 "recon[n]aissance"

Page 276 line 5: "polyhedral" a quick scan of a number of dictionaries yields no acknowledgement that polyhedral can be used as a noun. Should be "polyhedron"

Page 284 line 19: tartalan should be tarlatan

Page 292 line 36: "d'you" should be "D'you"

Page 307 line 14 how about that?["]

Page 334 line 19 "of" doubled

Page 348 line 1 "sixth" should be "Sixth"

Page 369 line 11 "guignette" should be "guinguette"

:Are you certain about this? [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 15:38, 4 April 2007 (PDT)

Page 374 line 20 "that" should be "than"

Page 380 line 24 "Sergeant, Vasquez" should be "Sergeant Vasquez"

Page 385 line 34 "knowss"

Page 399 line 33-34 "were" should be "was" to agree with "band"

Page 409 line 17 "Wellesianism"

Page 420 line 28 "opportunit[i]es"

Page 427 line 7 "esssential"

Page 440 line 33 "sib[i]lance"

Page 490 line 16 "Phil[l]ippa"

Page 503 line 25 "The cycle, Yashmeen, speculated, might..."

Page 505 line 1 "momument"

Page 513 line 11 "smlled"

Page 515 line 32 "th[r]oughout"

Page 515 line 39 last line: "Root Tubsmith had discovered this much [this] from nosing around"

Page 517 line 15 "''Haupthei[t]zer''" (In this and next 2 entries, consider the possibility that Pynchon used a contemporary source (1890s to 1910s) containing an archaic spelling with the '''tz.''')

Page 517 line 25 "Oberhaupthei[t]zer"

Page 518 line 1 "off" for "of"

Page 519 line 16 "Oberhaupthei[t]zer"

Page 521 line 22 "Kit, not convinced he had a future in the Habsburg navy, had decided to debark here, and quickly found a room between the port and the Mogador road and begun hanging around..." — if, beginning with the word "found," the verb forms switch in this sentence from the past participle ("had decided") to the simple past/preterite, then "begun" should read: "began".

Page 522 line 17 "alimzah" should be "azlimzah"

Page 524 line 10 "exhilirated"

Page 531 Line 13 "rende[z]vous"

Page 534 Line 4 "they perverted what the Vectorists thought they know of God's intention" — should be: "thought they knew"?

Page 548 line 24 "harbors," comma should be period

Page 552 line 23 "be" doubled

Page 563 line 36 "''mo[d]erskont''" (?)

Page 566 line 36 "''Kon[n]ichiwa''"

Page 616 line 21 dueling transliterations: "Izmeren[i]ye"

Page 623 line 18 ''Verfluchte[r]''

Page 636 line 4 "f[r]om"

Page 652 line 12 "opportunit[i]es"

Page 680 line 10 "Colonnel"

Page 726 line 26 "Adam[s]

Page 766 line 25 "Rimpung" should be "Rinpung"

Page 778 line 1 "have [to] go"

Page 782 line 16 "when" doubled

Page 786 line 5 "th[r]ough"

Page 790 line 5-6 "interrested"

Page 790 line 24 "a[r]rival"

Page 799 line 4 "st[r]eet"

Page 801 line 12 "susceptib[i]lity"

Page 831 line 5 "ar[t]ificial"

Page 880 line 38 "Gradengio" for Gradenigo

Page 887 line 25 "endlessless" for endlessness

Page 896 line 37 "''Tallis'' Fantasia" [of Vaughan Williams]: misleading italics

Page 900 line 19 "the" doubled

Page 915 line 16 "perfo[r]ming"

Page 943 line 4 "Ou[t]side"

Page 943 line 36 "unfor[e]seen [variant, 'fore' used elsewhere]

Page 968 line 27 "every[b]ody"

Page 971 line 4 "were" doubled

Page 1000 line 14 final period omitted from L.A.H.D.I.H.D.A[]

Page 1034 line 7 "Thickbush" [vs. "Thick Bush" at 8.3]

Page 1036 line 36 "querelans" [vs. "querulans" at 455.16]

Page 1036 line 32 "'Dick' Counterfly" [vs. double quotation marks on pp. 1034–35, 1037–38]

Page 1037 line 29 "tran[s]parencies"

Page 1049 line 21 ""Roswell" for "Roswell"

Page 1071 line 35 "''Um''" for "''Un''"

Page 1074 line 26 "...Reef, Stray, and Ljubica returned..." should be Yashmeen, not Stray (Estrella)

Page 1087 ("ABOUT THE AUTHOR"): lists ''Mason '''and''' Dixon,'' rather than ''Mason '''&''' Dixon'' as given on the "Also by Thomas Pynchon" page in the front matter.

'''Back Flap:''' ''Mason '''and''' Dixon''
[[Category:ATD]]

ATD 273-295

2008-01-22T20:53:59Z

Gobbag: /* Page 279 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 273==

'''the electric''' 
The Denver Tramway Company, beginning in 1886, operated electric railcars between central Denver and outlying communities. [http://www.denvergov.org/AboutDenver/history_narrative_3.asp Citation]

==Page 274==

'''Arapahoe''' 
Since Frank is at the moment in Denver, "on Arapahoe" would mean on Arapahoe Street. From the native tribe. Also a county in eastern CO and a scattering of places in US.

'''the Christian daring of Scarsdale's gesture''' 
To outside observers Vibe appears to be turning the other cheek.

'''drygulched''' 
In this context, ambushed and killed [http://www.reference.com/browse/all/drygulch drygulch].

'''after Repeal in '93''' 
Refers to the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which required the U.S. government to purchase an additional 4.5 million ounces of silver bullion every month with notes that could be redeemed for either silver or gold. Repealed by Congress after the Panic of 1893 to prevent depletion of the country's gold reserves. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Silver_Purchase_Act Wikipedia entry].

'''Lake County''' 
Colorado county of which Leadville is the county seat.

'''Haw Tabor''' 
Horace Tabor, a prospector, businessman, politician, and one of the wealthiest men in Colorado in the 19th Century. Tabor moved to Denver in 1859, later settling in Leadville in 1877. With the wealth he accumulated from his silver mine, Tabor established newspapers, a bank, and an opera house in Leadville (which still stands), and the Tabor Grand Opera House and the Tabor Block in Denver. In 1878, Tabor was elected Lieutenant Governor of Colorado and served in that post until January 1884. He served as U.S. Senator from Colorado for two months in 1883. Tabor ran unsuccessfully for Colorado governor in 1884, 1886, and 1888. In 1893, the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act devastated Tabor's fortune and his far-flung holdings were sold off. He died from appendicitis in 1899, and his legend still persists in Colorado.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Tabor Wikipedia entry].

'''Matchless''' 
The Matchless Mine in Leadville, formerly owned by Horace Tabor. Oscar Wilde visited the Matchless in 1882. The "widow" is Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt Doe, a/k/a "Baby Doe" Tabor, Horace Tabor's second wife (and his mistress before he married her in 1883). Baby Doe and her stubborn retention of the Matchless Mine is another Colorado legend. When Horace Tabor fell ill with appendicitis in 1899, his final request of Baby Doe was that she "hold onto the Matchless." This she did, with tragic results. After living in a shack beside the mine for 36 years, she froze to death one night in March 1935 after she ran out of firewood. Her body was found frozen with her arms crossed peacefully across her chest. After her death, 17 iron trunks that had been placed in storage in Denver were opened, as well as several gunny sacks and four trunks that had been left at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Leadville. All that was left from the Tabor fortune were several bolts of unique, untouched and exquisite cloth, several pieces of china, a tea service and some jewelry, including a diamond and sapphire ring. Baby Doe's story has inspired numerous works, including a movie and an opera by Douglas Moore, ''The Ballad of Baby Doe.'' More on Baby Doe Tabor, including pictures of the Matchless and the shack she lived and died in, can be found at these links: [http://www.babydoetabor.com/ Baby Doe Tabor.com]; [http://www.babydoe.org/index.php BabyDoe.org]

'''Zinc Rush''' 
Leadville had "rushes" on gold, silver, molybdenum, zinc...

'''the best-priced ore to be dug''' 
A mining engineer calculates the value of ore as the market price of its valuable constituents minus the cost of mining, concentrating and refining. Zinc metal brings less than gold or silver, but its ore may be attractive if it is rich in zinc and processing costs are low.

'''some bright engineer''' 
???

==Page 275==

'''concentrating mills''' 
First step in treating ore is concentration or beneficiation: breaking it into small pieces and separating the fragments that contain zinc from those that don't.

'''Molly-be-damned''' 
Molybdenum, which is still mined outside of Leadville.

'''Wren Provenance''' 
Let's not forget that one manifestation of '''V.''' was Victoria Wren. One could see this as the "provenance of wren?" There appear to be many allusions to '''V.''' in ATD.

'''heaps''' 
slag heaps. For their picture see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slag_heap Wikipedia].

'''Sons of Heaven section''' 
This is a term for the emperors of China.
Cf. references to the Chinese as 'the celestials', e.g. in 'Deadwood'.

'''Bear Paw''' 
An almond-flavored yeast-raised pastry shaped shaped like an irregular semicircle resembling a bear's claw. Octopus Ink seems to be a joking reference to the coffee.

==Page 276==

'''Jennie Rogers's House of Mirrors''' 
Jennie Rogers (1843-1909) was a notorious Denver madam who built the "House of Mirrors" at 1946 Market Street in Denver in 1889 and ran it until her death in 1909. The House of Mirrors embodies the Romanesque architecture of the era, and was specifically designed as a bordello. It was later taken over by the even more notorious Mattie Silks (1846-1929), who operated it until 1915, when it fell victim to so-called "reformers." The House of Mirrors still stands, and today operates as a bar and restauant. (This contributor has been drinking there many times.) More on its history, including pictures, and on the history of Denver's Market Street red-light district, can be found at [http://www.mattieshouseofmirrors.com/index.html this website].

'''"and there she was, not much on, what there was all black, tightly laced, stockings askew, standing in an open polyhedral of mirrors, examining herself from all the angles available. Transformed."''' 
Cf. Mélanie l' Heuremaudit in ''V.'', pp 397-8.

'''dress cavalry helmet''' 
A collection of pictures of various dress cavalry helmets can be found here: [http://news.webshots.com/album/165792861CIEtya cavalry helmet pictures].

==Page 277==

'''Aztlán''' 
Legendary or historical homeland of the Aztecs. Northwestern Mexico up to Utah in some reckonings.

'''He had a passing acquaintance with the Mancos and McElmo country...''' 
This is a clear reference to Mesa Verde [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_Verde], on the Mancos River between Mancos and Cortez, CO, southwest of Telluride. Pynchon has taken considerable liberties with the history of the area, as recounted by Wren Provenance, although perhaps not with what was known for certain at the time, to perhaps heighten the area's mystery. The Mesa Verde inhabitants had been building pueblos on the mesa from the 7th and 8th centuries, building cliff dwellings from the 9th to the 13th centuries, ranging far to the north and west for game and firewood. The surface ruins were known from the 1870s; the famous Cliff Palace (shown in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_Verde]) was discovered by local ranchers in 1888, and archaeological activities were underway by 1891. By the time the area was made a national park in 1906 it was clear that the cliff dwellings had been relatively rapidly ''abandoned'' in the 13th century. It has never been clear exactly why; theories include drought leading to loss of water and loss of essential firewood (the area is quite cold in winter) to overlogging or fire. Pynchon is accurate in noting evidence of intense fighting among the last cliff dwellers, even cannibalism, in the ruins.

'''images of creatures''' 
The ancient Puebloans of both the Mesa Verde and Chaco centers left numerous images, called petroglyphs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph], many of which are as eerie as Pynchon suggests here (the Wikipedia article shows Newspaper Rock in Canyonlands National Park in Utah). They include figures of humans and other creatures, and of comets and the 1054 supernova now known as the Crab Nebula (there are more than 14 pages of pictures of ''Pueblo Petroglyphs'' on Google Images: [http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Pueblo+Petroglyphs&btnG=Search+Images]).

==Page 278==

'''the report''' 
??? (Answer:) Wren was on an anthropological expedition. This is the report on the findings of that expedition.

'''If they were the same ones who made the exodus...and became the Aztecs''' 
The earliest interpretations of the Pueblo ruins, from those found first, was that these were Aztec ruins, as at Aztec Ruins National Monument in Aztec, NM ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Ruin_National_Monument]). The Puebloans were in contact with mesoamerican civilizations, as indicated by findings of trade goods like parrot feathers, but these were probably traded through intermediaries. In fact, the Mesa Verde inhabitants were the ancestors of the modern Rio Grande Pueblos, e.g. Taos Pueblo ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taos_Pueblo]).

'''Albany... bar mirror''' 
???

'''Booth Virbling''' This seems to be one of Pynchon's made-up names.
As a crime reporter at the time, he was probably given to a heavy use of verbs...warbling verbs, one might say? Booth-- staid place where 'crime reporters' work? Last name pronounced German sounds like "fear bling"?

==Page 279==

'''Bulkley Wells''' 
Easier to find under correct spelling Bulkeley. [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GDX/is_5_75/ai_65277661/pg_13 Here] is an account of some of his activities as mine manager and militia commander.

'''Ice Saw murder''' 
I saw murder?..eyewitness.??? Yes, a pun. Also, here is a picture of an [http://www.museum.state.il.us/RiverWeb/harvesting/archives/images/index.html?RollID=roll4&FrameID=Icesaw_450 ice saw], used to saw through ice for the purpose of ice fishing. And there is more fun and games if the saw is made of ice, recalling the scenario where there is a dead body, some blood and a pool of water. How did the body die? It was hacked to death with the saw made of ice which is now melted.

'''sparking''' 
v. tr. "to court or woo". intr. "to play the suitor"

'''hurdy girls''' 
In an article titled [[http://www.phantomranch.net/folkdanc/articles/boysnite.htm Boys' Nite Out in Leadville]], the following:
<blockquote>
in the 187Os, the Colorado Miner described the hurdy-gurdy houses of Leadville as "breathing holes of hell, where customers imbibe torchlight whiskey and indulge in the quadrille and the whirling sinuosities of the waltz."
</blockquote>
and
<blockquote>"The very first women in the mining camps of California were German girls who were called hurdy-gurdy girls after the musical instruments of the same name, and the name also became attached to the dance hall. While a long way from virginal status, the first girls were so prized that they did not have to participate in prostitution"
</blockquote>

[[http://southwest.library.arizona.edu/cala/body.1_div.6.html Elsewhere]] mention is made of "hurdy-houses" which appear to be the same thing

==Page 280==

'''South Pacific islands''' 
Cf Margaret Mead (1901-78), a cultural anthropologist who visited and published extensively on Samoa. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mead#Coming_of_Age_in_Samoa_and_the_Mead-Freeman_controversy Wikipedia entry]

==Page 281==
[[Image:telluridetoday.gif|thumb|200px|right|Telluride as it appears today ([http://www.hillhaus.com/blog/index.php?blog=7&cat=30 source])]]
'''first city''' 
The first extensive use of the alternating current was in arc lighting, the kind used in street lighting. There is some dispute in histories as to which city was first, but Telluride was among, if not the, first.

'''This Telluride chapter seems to express overtly part of Pynchon's key themes: when electricity hit the streets, it was Hell. Passim 280-281,
"the end of the world remained a possibility" to explain the unholy radiance [of the arc lighting].
Only a 'lunatic' argued it was not too late to turn back.
And Telluride is where the "owners" who had Webb killed, live.

'''"Beside the tracks at one bend stood a local lunatic"''' 
Like starting an amusement park ride.

'''"To-Hell-you-ride'''" 
To-Tell-u-ride

==Page 282==

'''level of hatred''' 
Cf capacitance?

'''drifts and stopes''' 
A drift is a horizontal or nearly horizontal underground opening. A stope is a usually steplike excavation underground for the removal of ore that is formed as the ore is mined in successive layers.

'''vagging bee''' 
"vag" is slang/shorthand for "vagrant"; the word "bee" as used here comes from the English dialect ''been'' or ''bean''. These were variations on ''boon'', once widely used in the sense of “voluntary help, given to a farmer by his neighbors, in time of harvest, haymaking, etc." In the early 1870s, the idea of bee began to be extended to situations that had some kind of communal basis, but weren’t farm work, some pretty sinister such as ''hanging bee'', ''lynching bee'' (this occurs in Mark Twain's ''Huckleberry Finn'') and ''whipping bee''. It is in this sense of a social gathering to perform some task that bee is used in ''Against the Day''. [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-spe2.htm From World Wide Words]

'''Bob Meldrum''' 
"Bad Man" Bob Meldrum served as agent to Pinkerton’s Detective Agency and a watchdog for the big cattle outfits around Little Snake River, gaining a reputation as a mean man with a quick trigger finger. He was rumored to be responsible for over fourteen wanton killings. Pynchon's characterisation of Meldrum (with his huge mustache and quick temper) is very similar to the Loony Tunes character Yosemite Sam.[http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35]

==Page 283==

'''''"joven"''''' 
Young fellow (Spanish).

'''Ellmore Disco''' 
Elmore = (H)ell More, i.e. More Hell?
:Possibly also an allusion to Elwood Blues, Dan Akroyd's character in '''The Blues Brothers'''.
:Or—with less distortion of the name—to Pynchon's near-contemporary Elmore Leonard, who writes many scenes of inventive and unconstrained violence.

'''when it was still Leadville''' 
where 'lead' is exchanged in gunfights, as here? Leadville, CO.

'''Seven-Toed Pete''' 
Seven Card Stud

==Page 284==

'''battered 'from the day''''

'''thunderstorm-proof mayonnaise''' 
Mayo is an ATD leitmotif. There is a folk belief, enshrined in no less an authority than the ''Joy Of Cooking'', that mayonnaise will separate if it is made when a thunderstorm is imminent.

'''jaconet... tartalan... crepe lissé''' 
jaconet 1.a soft, white, lightweight cotton textile 2. cotton cloth glazed on one side and dyed. 
Tarlatan (another printing error, apparently) is a kind of thin open muslin (the general name for the most delicately woven cotton fabrics) used especially for ball-dresses. 
Crepe lissé is a thin, transparent, smooth or glossy gauze-like fabric, plain woven, without any twill, of highly twisted raw silk or other staple.

'''Liberty's of London''' 
A famous department store in Regent Street, London, notable for its prints and fabrics. Opened in 1875 in a mock-Tudor building.

'''Grand Rapids style''' 
A simple, non-ornamental design style of furniture, with heavy emphasis
on office furniture. Mostly oak, it seems. From the 1860's, the office furniture was "mass-produced", whatever that means for the times. A kind of furniture allowing no "moral turpitude", as one online remark has it. (see Time.com use in 1978 below!)
Grand Rapids was a furniture center and major location for regular furniture exhibitions for decades before and after the time of ATD. Source: Grand Rapids Public Library catalog, passim.
:"The rooms are furnished in Grand Rapids style. The beds have pallets, but no springs, no Western-style mattresses, no top sheets; maid service consists of dumping a clean sheet and a blanket on the bed, to be made up by the guest."
:---Time.com...1978...on certain hotel rooms in China.

'''Four Corners Boys''' 
Deuce and Sloat? Perhaps nicknamed so after what they did to Lake on page 269: "They took her down to the Four Corners..."

==Page 285==

'''million apiece''' 
From 1900, a million dollars would have the value of @20 to 23 million in 2005, depending on ways of measuring purchasing value. It would have over $100 million dollars in value, measured against the worker's average wage at the time. See [http://www.measuringworth.com/ Measuring Worth site].
Note: The prediction is accurate. Think of such well-heeled communities as Aspen, Colorado that are to spring up.
'''music-hall Chinese''' 
What the hell is up with Pynchon's perennial mentions of China and Chinese?

There were a lot of Chinese in the west, starting with the gold rush in California, then building the transcontinental railway. Many remained, and Chinese laborers were pretty common out there.

'''C major... A miner''' 
A pun on the musical key of A minor. One octave of the C major scale consists of the notes c-d-e-f-g-a-b-c (all white keys on a piano). One octave of the A minor scale (technically, A natural minor) consists of the same note names as the C major scale, but starting on the "a" note, not on the "c" note: a-b-c-d-e-f-g-a. Because of this, A minor is called the relative minor of C major.

'''...it's out with that wackyzacky...''' 
The 'wakizashi' is a Japanese sword - 12 to 24 inches - often worn by a Samurai together with a Katana - another sword - and the two together are then called a Daish or somesuch. Although it would appear that this sword would have sometimes been used during Hara Kiri it is not the normal Hara Kiri weapon. That is usually a short - 6 to 12 inches long - double edged knife/sword called a Tant.' 

'''hari-kari''' 
Japanes: ''belly cutting''. Properly ''harakiri,'' but the distorted rhyming form has been in colloquial English for a long time.
What became a ritualised form of suicide in Japan chiefly amongst the nobility. It was sometimes offered to a nobleman as an honorable alternative to execution. A short knife or sword is plunged into the abdomen, drawn through and across the bowel laterally, with a small upwards twist at the end. Now extremely rare in Japan. More commonly referred to by the Chinese name for belly cutting - ''Seppuku'' - because eventually the Ritual was seen as being somewhat distastaeful, even dishonourable

'''Cal Rutan''' 
[[image:cal-rutan.jpg|thumb|Cal Rutan, on the left|right]]J. Calvin ("Cal") Rutan was the Telluride County sheriff during the labor struggles of 1902-1904.

==Page 286==

'''menudo''' 
Mexican tripe soup, so peppery it should come with a warning placard.

'''Loomis''' 
Loomis Disco. Possible reference to Adore Loomis, child victim of Homer Simpson in [[Nathanael West's]] novel ''[[The Day of the Locust]]'' (1939).

'''lowland alkali''' 
Any of various soluble mineral salts found in natural water and arid soils. And 'lowlands' are good places in Pynchon's vision.

'''hardpan''' 
A bedrock, foundation. Hard, unbroken ground. A layer of hard subsoil or clay, also called caliche.

==Page 287==

'''chicharrones''' 
Fried pork skins.

'''''Ristras''''' '''of .... dark purple chilies''' 
Strings of .... dried red peppers.

'''tortas''' 
Mexican sandwiches.

'''tamales''' 
Cornmeal paste wrapped in corn or banana husks and stuffed with chicken, pork or turkey and/or vegetables, then steamed.

'''sixty-degree wedges''' 
One-sixth of a pie.

'''''Por poco te faltó La Blanca''''' 
Spanish: You just missed La Blanca.

==Page 288==

'''Montrose''' 
A city on Colorado's Western Slope. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montrose%2C_Colorado Wikipedia entry].

'''popcorn snows''' 
Apparently an informal meteorological term for giant snowflakes.[http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=popcorn.snow&as_brr=0&sa=N&tab=pw Google]

The popcorn snows were first mentioned in L. Frank Baum's ''The Scarecrow of Oz'' (1915): 'In the Land of Mo the snow's made of popcorn, not frozen water crystals as it is in other places.' [http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/oziana/oz0726.htm Popcorn Snows].
Of course, Mr. Baum also wrote the classic ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' (1900).

'''vanning''' 
in context, 'a winnowing device". Archaic, from American Heritage Dictionary.

'''Loopy''' 
Anglo pronunciation of Lupe, a diminutive of the given name Guadalupe. Lupita is another.

'''masa''' 
Spanish: mass; also short for ''masa harina'': corn (maize) flour.

'''''comal''''' 
A Mexican style skillet, usually made of cast iron in round or oval shape.

==Page 289==

'''''Pobrecito''''' 
Poor little boy.

'''half a cubic foot''' 
12" by 12" by 6".

==Page 290==

'''miner's gad''' 
According to the OED, "1. a steel wedge, 2. a small iron punch with a wooden handle used to break up ore."

'''McBryan's''' 
???

'''trick animal''' 
???

==Page 291==

'''''seguro''''' 
sure.

'''parlor houses''' 
Brothels.

'''Cosmopolitan''' 
Cf p260.

'''bullion day''' 
4th of July ?

Perhaps it's simply payday, or the day when the weigh the bullion that miners have extracted?

'''Mr. Edison's scheme... static electricity''' 
???

'''Wetherill's magnet''' 
If electric, that's Kit's domain.

==Page 292==

'''pocket Kodak''' 
Possibly the "No. 3 Folding Pocket KODAK Camera" produced by Eastman Kodak from 1900 to 1915.

'''Hieronymus Wheel''' 
Seems to describe a roulette wheel. Google and the OED turn up nothing on "Hieronymus Wheel," but Pynchon's bizarre choice of language obviously suggests the Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch Wikipedia entry]. Perhaps Pynchon alludes to a certain wheel in a Bosch painting? Bosch's "Circle of Hell" depicts a wheel coming out of (or going into) the mouth of a fishlike creature, but that doesn't really make sense of the term, either. See [[Talk:ATD_273-295|discussion page 273-295]]

'''Dieter''' 
Oldfashioned German first name. Pronunciation: [diːtər]. Short for Dietrich. Popular male name in Germany after WWII.
:Since "Dieter" is "the barkeep" the English word ''dieter'' for someone who prescibes a diet comes to mind.
::Seems like a stretch. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 13:28, 5 February 2007 (PST)
Possibly a reference to H. Dieter Zeh [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Dieter_Zeh]and his "Many Minds" interpretation of the multiverse issue [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-minds_interpretation].[[User:Bklyn48|Bklyn48]] 19:37, 1 January 2007 (PST)
:How so? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 13:28, 5 February 2007 (PST)

The multiple interpretations of what is going on in the bar, which will become more apparent in the following pages, suggest the exemplification of this solution to the "multiple universes" problem.

'''Nippon''' 
Japan in Japanese.

'''bellows''' 
For explanation, see [http://licm.org.uk/livingImage/BellowsCamera.html Bellows Camera].

==Page 293==

'''Japanese''' 
Sumimasen = "Pardon me" or "Excuse me" 
Bobusan desu = This is Bob 
Gonnusuringaa = "gunslinger" 
("Gansuringaa" is a more appropriate Japanese transliteration of "gunslinger", but no Japanese will recognize the word anyway.) 
mottomo abunai desu = he is extremely dangerous 
(This is a bizarre Japanese expression.) 
Anna koto! = That sort of thing! 
(This does not seem to make sense contextually.)

'''fulgurescence''' 
n : an emission in flashes or sparks, like lightning. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstruse_topics_in_Pynchon's_Against_the_Day#Abstruse_words]

'''profanity... much of it in Japanese''' 
The Japanese language has little profanity in the Western sense: words considered vulgar and which cannot be spoken in polite company. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_profanity#Japanese Wikipedia entry on Profanity in Japanese]

'''"The loss of clarity . . . . in the dark"''' 
See the note for Hieronymous wheel in [[Talk:ATD_273-295|discussion]]. If the "Hieronymous wheel" refers to a Bosch painting, perhaps this scene continues some kind fo parallel to Hell or something else. The painting includes several unknown creatures, including a barrel with legs, while “thrashed about” suggests the central fish monster image of the painting.
:Cf. also:
:*p. 136, "and for that brief instant it would be possible to move from one version to the other.", i.e. from "Venice of the Arctic" to the secular Venice.
:*p. 221, "Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really . . . . An unscheduled Explosion, introduced into the accustomed flow of the day, may easily open, now and then, passages to elsewhere,"
:*p. 230, "'Let us imagine a lateral world, set only infintesimally to the side of the one we think we know.'"

::Cf., also the transdimensional travel of Buckaroo Bonzai in the Pynchon inspired film, ''The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension'' (1984), especially the images of 8th-Dimensional creatures that Bonzai sees as he passes through the mountain. [http://imdb.com/title/tt0086856/ IMDB entry].
::Cf., further, the notion of a "multiverse," that is, a physical ur-structure, comprised of many, if not infinite universes, of which ours is only one. Several contemporary cosmological theories require that a multiverse exist, though its existence remains highly conjectural. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse Wikipedia entry].

'''It became possible to believe that one had been spirited, in the swift cascade of light-flashes, to some distant geography where creatures as yet unknown thrashed about, howling affrightedly, in the dark.''' 
A possible reference to the phantastic dreamscapes of the Japanese animation-filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. Among his works, plausibly coded into this lengthy sentence, are ''Spirited Away'' (''Sen to Chihiro no kamikakukushi / The Spiriting-Away of Sen and Chihiro'', 2001) and ''Howl's Moving Castle'' (''Howl no ugoku shiro'', 2004).

'''"the American West--it is a spiritual territory! in which we seek to study the secrets of your--national soul''' 
It is possible that Pynchon needs a link from the Colorado Mine Wars to the Russo-Japanese War, but why place a ''Japanese Trade Delegation'' seeking to learn the spiritual secrets of the American West (which Merle Rideout correctly points out, lacks any) in the middle of a gunfight or brawl in Telluride? This could be a sly allusion, in a book about alternate histories and timelines, to arguably one of the best "alternate history" books ever written, Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle". In a 1962 in which the Axis won World war II, Nobusuke Tagomi is head of the ''Ranking Trade Mission'' to the (Japanese-occupied) Pacific States of America. He, like many Japanese, are fascinated with the artifacts of "pre-War US Culture", most especially with artifacts of the Old West and with its martial arts, which possess the spiritual power of "Historicity" (much as American occupation troops in Japan collected swords and studied Zen Buddhism). Tagomi, in short, collects old six-shooters, and practices quick-drawing and firing, a fact which is central to the book's action. Colorado figures heavily in the book's action as well; in the relatively free Rocky Mountain States (a buffer state between the PSA and the German-occupied USA) a solitary author has written a novel in which the US and Britain won World War II...[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_In_the_High_Castle]. And don't forget that this 'K' in Philip K. Dick's name stands for ''Kindred''...

'''packing out pyrites''' 
Mining fool's gold. Or wasting your resources by loading it into cars or skips instead of throwing it on the tail heap.

'''katana''' 
Japanese samurai sword.
'''

==Page 294==

'''Baron Akashi''' 
A Japanese general whose career included spying, but, anachronistically, his career did not begin until 1889. He was a spy in Europe during Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). So would he've been famous even to the lengths of backwoods CO? How much spyin' can a poor boy do if he's famous?
:Baron Akashi himself was famous, but his sidekick was not. The former didn't show up at Telluride but the latter did as 'some li'l laundry runner'.

'''planning a hoist''' 
''Heist'' is now universal, but originally it was a dialect form of ''hoist.''

'''Squirrel and sarsaparilla''' 
Squirrel Whiskey and Sarsaparilla Soda. Squirrel whiskey was so called because it was supposedly so strong it would drive its drinkers up a tree. Sarsparilla, by contrast, is derived from the roots of the Sarsparilla tree.

==Page 295==

'''summer of '89''' 
Butch Cassidy and his accomplices robbed the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride on 24 June 1889 ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Cassidy#1889.E2.80.931894_.E2.80.94_early_robberies.2C_going_to_prison Wikipedia])

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

Errata

2008-01-22T19:29:34Z

Gobbag: /* Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition */

The following list provides '''errata''' for ''[[Against the Day]],'' indicating places where readers have found misspellings, punctuation gaffes or other similar errors. Please note that some of these "mistakes" may be deliberate stylistic choices on the author's part.

== Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition ==

[[Against the Day description|Front flap]]: "Nikolai" Tesla, elsewhere (and conventionally) "Nikola"

Copyright page line 1: "VIKING" (should be "PENGUIN PRESS")

Copyright page line 16: "Viking Penguin" (should be "Penguin Press")

Page 63 line 14 "Unless," Ed pointed out, ["]it ''is'' God."

Page 82 line 1 "richochets"

Page 82 line 30 "Cour d'Alene"

Page 87 line 12 "be" doubled

Page 87 line 31-32 "ridegerunning"

Page 92 line 15 "what" doubled

Page 116 line 39 "de[c]lared"

Page 202 line 32 "Didt'n" (possibly)

Pae 236 line 10: "Headingly" (should be "Headingley")

Page 236 line 38: "exhiliration"

Page 240 line 8 "Re[n]frew"

Page 248 line 18: ''Culo'',[']"

Page 254 line 31 "recon[n]aissance"

Page 276 line 5: "polyhedral" a quick scan of a number of dictionaries yields no acknowledgement that polyhedral can be used as a noun. Should be "polyhedron"

Page 284 line 19: tartalan should be tarlatan

Page 307 line 14 how about that?["]

Page 334 line 19 "of" doubled

Page 348 line 1 "sixth" should be "Sixth"

Page 369 line 11 "guignette" should be "guinguette"

:Are you certain about this? [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 15:38, 4 April 2007 (PDT)

Page 374 line 20 "that" should be "than"

Page 380 line 24 "Sergeant, Vasquez" should be "Sergeant Vasquez"

Page 385 line 34 "knowss"

Page 399 line 33-34 "were" should be "was" to agree with "band"

Page 409 line 17 "Wellesianism"

Page 420 line 28 "opportunit[i]es"

Page 427 line 7 "esssential"

Page 440 line 33 "sib[i]lance"

Page 490 line 16 "Phil[l]ippa"

Page 503 line 25 "The cycle, Yashmeen, speculated, might..."

Page 505 line 1 "momument"

Page 513 line 11 "smlled"

Page 515 line 32 "th[r]oughout"

Page 515 line 39 last line: "Root Tubsmith had discovered this much [this] from nosing around"

Page 517 line 15 "''Haupthei[t]zer''" (In this and next 2 entries, consider the possibility that Pynchon used a contemporary source (1890s to 1910s) containing an archaic spelling with the '''tz.''')

Page 517 line 25 "Oberhaupthei[t]zer"

Page 518 line 1 "off" for "of"

Page 519 line 16 "Oberhaupthei[t]zer"

Page 521 line 22 "Kit, not convinced he had a future in the Habsburg navy, had decided to debark here, and quickly found a room between the port and the Mogador road and begun hanging around..." — if, beginning with the word "found," the verb forms switch in this sentence from the past participle ("had decided") to the simple past/preterite, then "begun" should read: "began".

Page 522 line 17 "alimzah" should be "azlimzah"

Page 524 line 10 "exhilirated"

Page 531 Line 13 "rende[z]vous"

Page 534 Line 4 "they perverted what the Vectorists thought they know of God's intention" — should be: "thought they knew"?

Page 548 line 24 "harbors," comma should be period

Page 552 line 23 "be" doubled

Page 563 line 36 "''mo[d]erskont''" (?)

Page 566 line 36 "''Kon[n]ichiwa''"

Page 616 line 21 dueling transliterations: "Izmeren[i]ye"

Page 623 line 18 ''Verfluchte[r]''

Page 636 line 4 "f[r]om"

Page 652 line 12 "opportunit[i]es"

Page 680 line 10 "Colonnel"

Page 726 line 26 "Adam[s]

Page 766 line 25 "Rimpung" should be "Rinpung"

Page 778 line 1 "have [to] go"

Page 782 line 16 "when" doubled

Page 786 line 5 "th[r]ough"

Page 790 line 5-6 "interrested"

Page 790 line 24 "a[r]rival"

Page 799 line 4 "st[r]eet"

Page 801 line 12 "susceptib[i]lity"

Page 831 line 5 "ar[t]ificial"

Page 880 line 38 "Gradengio" for Gradenigo

Page 887 line 25 "endlessless" for endlessness

Page 896 line 37 "''Tallis'' Fantasia" [of Vaughan Williams]: misleading italics

Page 900 line 19 "the" doubled

Page 915 line 16 "perfo[r]ming"

Page 943 line 4 "Ou[t]side"

Page 943 line 36 "unfor[e]seen [variant, 'fore' used elsewhere]

Page 968 line 27 "every[b]ody"

Page 971 line 4 "were" doubled

Page 1000 line 14 final period omitted from L.A.H.D.I.H.D.A[]

Page 1034 line 7 "Thickbush" [vs. "Thick Bush" at 8.3]

Page 1036 line 36 "querelans" [vs. "querulans" at 455.16]

Page 1036 line 32 "'Dick' Counterfly" [vs. double quotation marks on pp. 1034–35, 1037–38]

Page 1037 line 29 "tran[s]parencies"

Page 1049 line 21 ""Roswell" for "Roswell"

Page 1071 line 35 "''Um''" for "''Un''"

Page 1074 line 26 "...Reef, Stray, and Ljubica returned..." should be Yashmeen, not Stray (Estrella)

Page 1087 ("ABOUT THE AUTHOR"): lists ''Mason '''and''' Dixon,'' rather than ''Mason '''&''' Dixon'' as given on the "Also by Thomas Pynchon" page in the front matter.

'''Back Flap:''' ''Mason '''and''' Dixon''
[[Category:ATD]]

ATD 243-272

2008-01-21T23:22:03Z

Gobbag: /* Page 267 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 243==

'''The Chums return''' 
When were the Chums last seen in AtD? As far back as page 142?

A brief reminder of who the Chums are and what we know about them so far:
:'''Randolph St. Cosmo''', commander.
:'''Lindsay Noseworth''', Master-at-Arms and second in command, hates slackers and slang.
:'''Miles Blundell''', handyman, awkward, with an "ample waist" (11), also ship's Commissary, whose cooking ranges from pure cordon bleu to inedible. (110)
:'''Darby Suckling''', the baby of the crew, served "as both factotum and mascotte". By page 141 or so, has transformed from spirited youth to bomb obsessed, (111) sneering, snide cynic. Because of hitting adolescence?
:'''Chick Counterfly''', the newest member of the crew, picked up by the Chums in the South while on the run from the KKK. At last appearance, had become Dr. Counterfly, knowledgeable Science Officer aboard the Inconvenience (141). Reliably humorous. (110). Chick's style of speech here seems intermediate between the country boy of the early chapters and the sophisticated Dr Counterfly who met the Vormance expedition. Are we also at an intermediate point on the timeline?

[[image:fumaioli.jpg|thumb|150px|Fumaioli in Venice|right]]
'''''fumaioli''''' 
Italian: ''funnels''; fumaioli are large wide-topped chimneys, common to the rooftops of Venice.

'''''certo''''' 
sure, certain.

'''''Seccatura''''' 
Italian: ''Inconvenience''

==Page 244==

'''''ragazza''''' 
Italian: ''girl''.

'''Picardy thirds''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. Miles seems just as moved by them as Lew. [[ATD_26-56#Page_50 | Cf p50]]

The gondolier is singing harmony with himself, or else Miles is imagining the accompaniment.

Picardie is also a region in northern France and "during the Middle Ages... included the Dutch speaking Flanders." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy] The region was a hotbed of action along the Western Front in WWI and played host to the Battle of the Somme, which totaled more than a million casualties and was "one of the bloodiest battles in human history."[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme]

'''''stabilimento''''' 
Italian: establishment.

==Page 245==
'''Garibaldi''' 
Famous Italian leader, major figure in the Italian Unification. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garibaldi Wikipedia]

'''''"Ehi, sugo!"''''' 
"Hey, sauce!" Does this make sense to anyone?
It does not make any sense in Italian.

'''twentyfold''' 
5 chums times 4 suspects each. (Randolph suspects Lindsay, Miles, Darby and Chick of being the leak; and so on around the crew. And that assumes no one suspects Pugnax!)

'''''osteria''''' 
tavern.

'''San Polo''' 
The smallest district/area in Venice, and among the oldest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Polo Wikipedia]

'''''rio''''' 
narrow waterway in Venice.

'''against the night''' 
OK...

'''''calli''''' 
Venetian 'street' or 'lane'.

==Page 246==

'''''sotoporteghi''''' 
passageways. See picture for one example [http://www.dialetto-veneto.it/images/FotoComano/Comano-Cattognano.jpg].

'''''"Sa stai, O! Lungo, ehi!"''''' 
It does not mean anything in Italian or in the Venetian dialect. One possibility is mimicking the callouts of gondoliers. ''Lungo'' could be someone's nickname. 
Other possibility is a wrong lettering of: ''Xa star, oh! Lungo, ehi!'', meaning ''Ehi, Lungo, let it be and let's go!'' or something similar.

'''''cameriere''''' 
Italian: waitresses (plural of ''cameriera'').

'''''pallonisti''''' 
(fake-)Italian: balloonists.

'''''Ehi, macché, Pina! ''''' 
Italian: Ehi, Giusep(Pina), what are you telling me?

'''''giadrul''''' 
Again, doesn't mean anything in Italian or Venetian dialect. Seems to be a [https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0007&L=irtrad-l&D=0&T=0&P=94630 term of insult], variously described as American-Italian only (see previous link) and southern Italian (see next). One source gives one meaning as "[http://it.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070318034908AAem49X zuccone]" - this appears to mean "[http://notes.tranq.com/archives/2004/01/23/zuccone/ pumpkinhead]". I guess we're looking for something phallic, given the context. 
(''as far as I can see, it is an American-Italian deformation of the correct italian word "citrullo", which in fact is some sort of "dumb ass", and is derived from neapolitan for "cetriolo", that is, "cucumber" '')

'''"with all the spaghetti-joints in this town to choose from, are you saying those dadblame Russians have come in ''here''?"''' 
reminiscent of a similar line from the film ''Casablanca'', spoken by Humphrey Bogart: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

==Page 247==

'''tacchino in pomegranate sauce''' 
turkey in pomegranate sauce and, presumably, the "Purple Thanksgiving" to which Miles refers above.

'''''Dum vivimus, bibamus''''' 
While we live, let us drink. Paraphrase of "Dum vivimus, vivamus".

'''vini frizzanti''' 
sparkling wine.

'''SANGUIS RUBER, MENS PURA''' 
Latin: Red blood, clean mind.

'''''Serrata del Maggior Consiglio''''' 
Great Council Lockout, 1297. Link to the "Maggior Consiglio" entry on Reference.com [http://www.reference.com/browse/all/Maggior%20Consiglio]

'''Napoleon's abolition''' 
1797. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia]

'''Polos' return''' 
Marco Polo together with his father and uncle returned to Venice in 1295 from their travel to China started in 1271. 

''Marco Polo'' (1254-1324), a Venetian traveller. Was born of a nobel family at Venice, while his father and uncle had gone on a mercantile expedition by Constantinople and the Crimea to Bokhara and to Cathy (China). The Mongol prince commissioned them as envoys to the Pope, a commission they tried in vain to carry out in Italy (1269). The Polos started again a new trip to China in 1271, taking with them young Marco,
and arrived at the court of Kublai Khan in 1275 by way of Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan to Lop Nor, then across the Gobi desert to Kansu and Shang-tu. Marco Polo entered the diplomatic service of Kublai Khan and was sent on missions to various parts of the Mongol empire. The Polos left China on 1282 and returned by way of Sumatra, India, and Persia to Venice (1295). In 1298 Marco was in command of a galley at the battle of Curzola, where the Venetians were defeated by the Genoese, and he was a prisoner for a year at Genoa. Here it was thought that he dictated to another captive an account of his travels, published under the title of ''Divisamemt dou monde''. (English title: ''The Travels of Marco Polo''.) ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo Marco Polo].)

''Kublai Khan'' (1214-94), Mongol khan, emperor of China, grandson of Jenghiz Khan. He completed the conquest of northern China and became the first foreigner ever to rule China. An enegetic prince, he suppressed his rivals, adopted the Chinese mode of civilisation, encouraged men of letters and made Buddhism the state religion. But his attempt to invade Japan ended in disaster. His dominions extended from Arctic Ocean to the Strait of Malacca, and from Korea to Asia Minor and the confines of Hungary. The splendor of his court inspired the graphic pages of Marco Polo. (from Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 1984 edition.)

==Page 248==

[[image:doge.jpg|thumb|100px|Doge by Giovanni Bellini|right]]'''Doge's hat''' 
For some thousand years, the chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice was styled the Doge, a rare but not unique Italian title derived from the Latin Dux, as the major Italian parallel Duce and the English Duke. Doges of Venice were elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia entry]

'''''Attenzione al culo''''' 
Italian: watch your ass.

'''Shambhala''' 
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is a mystical kingdom hidden somewhere beyond the snowpeaks of the Himalayas. Shambhala is believed to be a society where all the inhabitants are enlightened. During the 19th century, Theosophical Society founder H.P. Blavatsky alluded to the Shambhala myth, giving it currency for Western occult enthusiasts. Later esoteric writers further emphasized and elaborated on the concept of a hidden land inhabited by a hidden mystic brotherhood whose members labor for the good of humanity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambhala Wikipedia entry]

'''Professor Svegli of the University of Pisa''' 
The fictional professor's name comes from the Italian ''sveglio'' for "clever, dextrous, skillful."

'''"try to forget the usual picture in two dimensions"''' 
Cf. page 220, the idea behind the ''Tetractys'' as explained by Nigel and Neville.

'''an episode of intentional blindness''' 
Echoes the "denial of ordinary vision" that Lew sees when he meets Professor Renfrew (p. 240). Might these "blind spots" in sense evoke Iceland Spar?

==Page 249==

'''"Those whose enduring object is power in this world are only too happy to use without remorse the others, whose aim is of course to transcend all question of power. Each regards the other as a pack of deluded fools."''' 
Over time, Pynchon appears to have come to a belief in a massive conflict between cultures "valuing analysis and differentiation" and those valuing "unity and integration". The two alternate maps of Asia could be a reference to these disparate worldviews.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. Wikipedia entry on V.]

'''The problem lies with the projection''' 
(a) Projection by each group of its own obsession onto the other group. (b) Cartographic projection, i.e., how the round world gets imaged onto a flat sheet of paper.

'''Imaginary surface''' 
Presumably meant to mean (or at least allude to) imaginary in the mathematical sense: involving the square root of -1.

'''paramorphoscope''' 
AtD is itself a paramorphoscope; satire and science fiction typically hold up a distorting mirror to the world in which they are written, and present worlds "set to the side of the one we have taken". In the end the correct paramorphic "mirror" shows the world clearly.

'''"a certain percentage of them went mad and ended up in the asylum on San Servolo"''' 
Cf. the Northern Ohio Insane Asylum with its light-obsessed inmates at [[ATD_57-80#Page_59|page 59]].

'''the asylum on San Servolo''' 
First established as a military hospital in 1715, later became a mental asylum. Seems that San Servolo is to Venice what Bedlam is to London. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo Wikipedia]

'''Clifford's term''' 
W.K. Clifford, (1845-1879): an English mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford Wikipedia]

==Page 250==

[[Image:stmarks.jpg|thumb|200px|right|St Mark's Basilica (Basilica di San Marco) in Venice]]
'''Dr. Cantor''' 
Georg Cantor (1845 - 1918), German mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_theorem Cantor's Theorem] is what is most relevant to his mention here.

'''the plano-convex designs of Griendl von Ach''' 
For a brief history of the compound-lens microscope, and the roles played by the Italians and the Dutch, including Griendl von Ach, see:
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Microscope

'''prophetic vision of St. Mark''' 
Mark the Evangelist (1st century) is traditionally believed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark and a companion of Peter. From [http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brown-venice.html this site]: "...a prophetic dream that Mark was said to have experienced during his earlier, supposed ministry in the area of the Venetian lagoon. In it he was visited by an angel who told him that he would find his final resting place on the very site where San Marco would later be built." In the first century there was no settlement worth mentioning in the Lagoon yet. The prophecy was "fulfilled" in 828 when the saint's remains stolen on orders of Doge Giustiniano Participazio in Alexandria were brought to Venice. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_the_Evangelist Wikipedia entry] St. Mark is represented by a winged lion and is the patron saint of Venice [http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/saintm08.htm].

'''''but in reverse''''' 
Miles now takes the place of the angel. Who or what is the "Being" and what form does the prophecy take?

'''neither sails, masts, nor oars''' 
Not a craft that is driven by the wind or human muscle. To say more could spoil a plot point.

==Page 251==

[[Image:stmarklion.jpg|thumb|600px|center|The Lion of St. Mark, by Carpaccio]]

'''Lion of St. Mark by Carpaccion''' 
Vittore Carpaccio (c.1460–1525/6) was a Venetian painter. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittore_Carpaccio Wikipedia entry]

'''the vision of St. Mark, but in reverse''' 
In St. Mark's vision, an angel appeared to Mark and informed him that his remains would one day end up in his present location, which later became Venice. Here, Miles seems to assume the form of the angel (in the form of a lion?) and the 'promise' Pynchon mentions seems to be the angel's promise to Mark.

'''our own duty, our own fate... the real journey''' 
Pynchon's one-paragraph summation of human life and its meaning recalls a letter Pynchon wrote in the early 1960s, [[The_World_is_at_Fault|The World is at Fault]], in which he also summed up the entirety of human life in a few tidy sentences. Both employ the word 'pilgrimage.'

==Page 252==

'''''sotopòrteghi''''' 
Tunnels or passageways under large buildings.

'''tenebrous''' 
Means "shadowy" but is also a link back to the previous paragraph. The Tenebrae Service is a special form that is meant to recreate the feelings of the Passion story, also represented by the Stations of the Cross.

'''Renata''' 
Note that Renata is the name of the female protagonist in Ernest Hemingway's ''Across the River and into the Trees'', set in Venice.

'''Glagolitic''' 
The Glagolitic Alphabet is the oldest known Slavic alphabet (9th c.). It originated as a tactic to lessen the dependence of the subjects of the Prince of Greater Moravia on Frankish priests, who banned it but could not suppress it; it played a similar role in preserving Bulgarian independence from Byzantium. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic] It appears to be a nexus of the kind of simultaneous temporal and spiritual tasks the Chums of Chance are now involved in. In this, it raises the issues first explored by Pynchon in the "Tchitcherine in Kyrghizia" sections of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in which the introduction of a written alphabet causes immense political and social change.

'''Gauloise''' 
famous French cigarette. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauloise Wikipedia].

'''''scusi''''' 
Italian: Excuse me.

'''''Affascinante, caro''''' 
Italian: Fascinating, dear (addressed to a male person).

'''''ragazzo''''' 
Italian: Boy.

'''''Mattoidi''''' 
Italian: Semi-insane persons. The word was [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-mat1.htm coined by Cesare Lombroso,] the physiognomist.

'''''Prego''''' 
Italian: Please.

==Page 253==

'''Pozzuoli''' 
A city in the Province of Naples (''Napoli'') in the region of Campania. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzuoli Wikipedia].

'''The Tarocchi are much, much older.''' 
Not at all! This is one of those ideas that rarely gets questioned, especially since some "interpreters" of the tarot claim ancient Egyptian origins. The actually only [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot date back to the 15th century], as playing cards, and tarot divination was invented in the 19th century, with absolutely no historical precedent.

However, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley Aleister Crowley] in his writings and the design of his own version of the tarot, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Thoth_(Crowley) Thoth Deck], made a case for the Tarot unifying and being rooted in much older divination methods from Ancient egypt to the[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] to Greek [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology astrology]. Crowley's Golden Dawn gets a previous mention in ATD. Though work on the Thoth deck would not begin until 1938, Crowley´s assignment of the Kabbalah's [http://jktarot.com/naples Sephiroth to the major arcana] probably bears attention when considering the chapter structure of ATD: he called the correspondence "The Naples Arrangement" in honour of having worked it out there, and this passage's mention of Renata's business associate being in Naples at this moment is unlikely to be coincidence.
:Surely a robust skepticism toward Crowley and his research methods is in order? Consider, for example, this [http://www.tarothermit.com/letter.htm "open letter"] to tarot users—from a judicious scholar and believer, not a committed skeptic—making the point that if the cards embody images (of whatever origin) "speaking" to the reader or student, it isn't essential to press the further claim that they were invented by the god Thoth. The paintings lack a couple of millennia of "temporal bandwidth" but aren't necessarily voided of appeal by that, any more than Michelangelo's ''Pietà'' is a less-valid devotional object for having been sculpted 1500 years after the event.

'''''sfumato''''' 
Refers to a well known painting method which blends so subtly the colors and tones that no perceptible transition is visible, as demonstrated by Leonardo da Vince's ''Mona Lisa''. See [http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato Wikipedia]. 
The context seems to imply ''smoke'', then ''fumo'' instead should be used.
:No, the evocation of the painterly effect becomes a metaphor for the way the boat comes into sight.

==Page 254==

'''''Pax tibi, Darbe''''' 
Latin: Peace to you, Darby. ''Pax tibi'' is not at all obscure—devout Catholics used it as a parting formula—but Chick has Latinized Darby's name to ''Darbus'' (vocative case ''Darbe'') and may be consciously echoing the text in [[#Page_251|Carpaccio's lion painting]] or on a [[#Page_247|pre-Napoleonic]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Most_Serene_Republic_of_Venice.svg flag of the Most Serene Republic of Venice:] ''Pax tibi Marce evangelista meus,'' "Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist."

'''like some damned ''Farewell'' Symphony''' 
Franz Josef Haydn, 1772, Hungary. Musicians at Count Esterházy's court had been kept too long on duty (and away from their families). Going on strike would have been disrespectful, so in the last movement of Haydn's hinting work, the players one by one extinguish their candles and exit, leaving two violins to play the last phrases.

'''"Chums of Chance were expected to die on the job. Or else live forever, there being two schools of thought, actually."''' 
Possibly a reference to the fact that the Chums seem to live simultaneously in the "real" world of the novel and also in fictional stories within the novel.

==Page 255==

'''Mostruccio''' 
Italian, literally: small monster, meant as a lovely nickname.

[[Image:samoyeds.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Samoyeds]]
'''Samoyeds''' 
These nomadic reindeer herders help with the herding, pull sleds, and are sometimes called "the smiley dog" in reference to their seemingly smiling faces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoyed_(dog) Wikipedia]

'''Bastille Day''' 
The Campanile di San Marco collapsed 14 July 1902. Pynchon Wiki on the [[Campanile]].

'''''lasagnoni''''' 
Italian, plural of ''lasagnone'': Blowhard, braggart.

A hint may come from an Italian dictionary: a ''lasagnone'' being an awkward, simple person, the kind of loafers who abound on city squares or street corners and, consequently, may appear in tourists' pictures.

==Page 256==
[[Image:Campanile.jpg|thumb|200px|right]]

'''dual citizenship''' 
They live in two places, there are two skycraft, they point a gun at one place but the shell strikes a different place. Lots of '''bi-''' somethings in this passage.

'''the little-understood enigmata of the simultaneous''' 
The concept of simultaneous events, including the accurate definition and, moreover, the very ''need'' of such a definition, played a significant role in the soon-to-be formulated [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity Special Relativity Theory]. One of the main consequences of the theory is the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity relativity of simultaneity].

'''four-brick groupings''' 
Padzhitnoff sees the Campanile come apart as a game of Tetris! The "four-brick groupings [...] begin their gentle, undeadly descent, rotating and translating in all available modes". (See [[ATD_119-148#Page_123|page 123]] for more on Tetris.)

'''the tower collapses''' 
Might have some relation to the final poem of ''Gravity's Rainbow''. The fall of the tower is foreshadowed -- foretold, actually -- in Chick´s Tarot reading by Renata (See [[ATD_243-272#Page_253|page 253]]).

==Page 257==

'''What stood for a thousand years''' 
Pretty close: Construction of the Campanile began in the year 912.

'''deciduous''' 
Something that falls, drops or is shed, like leaves from a tree or baby teeth.

'''We had the weather-gauge''' 
In the days of sail, [http://www.weathergage.com/ weather gage] described the relative position of two ships or forces. If you were downwind you could run or, if you meant to engage the enemy, tack to approach him. Every time you changed tack you lost an opportunity to shoot (because your guns pointed left and right). If you lay upwind, you could keep your guns trained on the enemy throughout the engagement. The weather gage was an often decisive battle advantage, and the phrase is common in nautical narratives.

'''neuræsthenic prostration''' 
This is the third (at least) time Randolph has exhibited this tendency.

:This is the third time that this word has appeared so far, but in the second instance (page 188) it was used by Nigel to describe Lew Basnight, not Randolph.

:Not the word, but this reaction in Randolph occurred on pages 12 and 28. It seems to be a regular thing with him.

==Page 258==

'''Tetralith''' 
Modern math term for three dimensional solid formed by merging three hyperbolic paraboloids in a manner that they have a common midpoint. See [http://www.tetranometry.com/#tetralith Tetralith Photo #2]. Pynchon just means a Tetris-shaped projectile, a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetromino Tetromino].
:A "monolith" (as in ''2001: A Space Odyssey'')means an "object made of a single block of stone". Hence "tetralith" means an "object made of four blocks of stone", which is exactly what you see on the game "Tetris".

'''Japanese character for "four" being same as that for "death"''' 
Not quite correct. The Japanese kanji (Chinese) characters for four 四 and death 死 are quite distinct, but can be pronounced in the same way, hence the taboo.

'''Ryohei Uchida''' 
Ultra-nationalist, founder of the Black Dragon Soceity (see below), a right-wing, paramilitary organization. See [http://members.tripod.com/ravenshrine/uchida.html Ryohei Uchida].

'''''polny pizdets''''' 
Crude Russian: a total screwup.

'''Black Dragon Society''' 
A paramiltary, ultra-nationalist, right-wing organization in Japan founded by Ryohei Uchida in 1901. Its initial public goal was to support Janpanese expansion in Manchuria. Therefore, during the period from 1901 to the end of World War I, it aimed to help the Japanese government drive the Russian presence out of that region. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 (a war fought over Manchuria, with the Russians soundly defeated) it was active in espionage, sabotage and assassination against the Russians. During the 20's, 30's and later periods the Black Dragon Society evolved and expanded its activities around the world, including the United States. It was finally disbanded in 1946 by General MacArthur after World War II. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuryu-kai Wikipedia entry].

'''''Smirno''''' 
Russian: quiet!

==Page 259==

'''''dov'era, com'era''''' 
Italian: where it was, as it was. See [http://veniceblog.typepad.com/veniceblog/2003/12/comera_dovera.html veniceblog]. On July 14, 1902 the St. Mark's Campanile in Piazza San Marco, Venice, mysteriously and totally collapsed. Under the 'battle cry' of '''''com'era, dov'era''''' it was rebuilt. The Campanile was reopened on April 25 (St. Mark's Day) 1912. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark's_Campanile St. Mark's Campanile]. Also, Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 256|page 256:the tower collapses]].

''''La Marangona''''' 
The largest bell in the campanile is called la Marangona. At midnight, that massive bell resounds alone from high in the Piazza, and can be heard from almost any point in the city. There are four other bells in the campanile and they each have a name.

'''"Bells are the most ancient objects. They call to us out of eternity"''' 
This chapter is bookended by references to bells. It opens, "Across the city noontide a field of bells emerged into flower."

==Page 260==

'''Deuce and Sloat return''' 
These two, it will be recalled, are the men hired by the mine owners to kill Webb Traverse. (193) It is unclear who is whose sidekick. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_195|195]]) Sloat tends to bodies, Deuce the spirit. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_197|197]])

'''Curly Dee''' 
Mathematicians call the "partial derivative" symbol "curly d." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_derivative Wikipedia shows the symbol.]

'''inside out''' 
Optical illusion.

==Page 261==

'''Nonpareil Eating House''' 
The motto over the door was probably "None Like It!"

'''Mayva and Lake''' 
Webb Traverse's wife and daughter.

'''lard smoke''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke," and p. 216, "Just greasy ashes by the trailside."

'''biscuit-shooter''' 
I.e., a cook.

'''Cañon City''' 
Site of the Colorado State Penitentiary, meant to suggest Deuce and Sloat had done time there.

'''gong''' 
???
17:18, 1 January 2007 (PST)[[User:Bklyn48|Bklyn48]]
 "kicking the gong around" is slang for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnie_the_Moocher smoking opium]. Here, Sloat seems to mean that Deuce's opium smoking has affected his judgement.

==Page 262==

'''Willis Turnstone''' 
Turnstones are members of the sandpiper family, stocky birds that use their stout bills to flip over rocks and such in search of food. There are two species: Black Turnstone (''Arenaria melanocephala'') and Ruddy Turnstone (''A. interpres''). The [http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Ruddy_Turnstone.html Ruddy's] breeding plumage is a bold calico of white, orange, and black.

==Page 263==

'''"Crazier."''' 
Cf Bonnie and Clyde.

'''Oleander Prudge''' 
A name that brings joy to the heart of any Dickensian who happens to be reading along.

==Page 264==

'''single-jacker''' 
A miner who with a hammer and spike cuts a hole into rock for placement of a stick of dynamite. A set of holes are cut for each "synchronized" blast.
(Double jackers work as a team.)
Infer (this) one as a loner, a bit crazy, single minded, silent, easily hurt or misunderstood, doesn't play well with others...

'''How I feel about Mr. Kindred...and...Webb Traverse are two different things''' 

This is an interesting exchange between Lake and Oleander Prudge. Clearly Oleander hits a nerve as Lake spills the hotcakes. Lake goes into denial, saying her love of someone she would normally hate (Deuce -- her father's killer) and hating someone she would normally love (her father Webb) are "two different things."

Oleanders rejoinder, "they can't be," has the finality of a mathematical proof.

It's as if Lake is looking at passion through an emotional lense of iceland spar and sees two sets of images (father/lover, hate/love)and wants to believe they're different, whereas Oleander sees that in fact they are one. This won't be the last time Lake gets herself a "twofer."

==Page 265==

'''backing away down the valley''' 
It's instructive to look at a [http://www.vacationtelluride.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=standard&categoryId=11&subCategoryId=0 map or satellite photo of Telluride.] You could very well lay a single track from the mouth of the valley up to the town, but no farther. So the train drives into the station, then backs out until there's room for a spur where it can turn around.

'''gullet of days''' 
Metaphor. The miners' lives "as easily (as jug whisky)disappeared down the throat of everyday life".

==Page 266==

'''white-throated swift''' 
A swift is a small plainly colored bird similar to a swallow. The [http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/187/_/White-throated_Swift.aspx white-throated species,] which breeds in the western U.S. and winters in Mexico, is less plain than some. And get the species name: '''''Aeronaut'''es saxatalis.''

'''November''' 
November 1903.

'''in January, martial law''' 
January 3, 1904.

'''nymph du pave''' 
should probably read "nymphE du pave": [http://dict.die.net/nymphe%20du%20pave/ street-whore]. Theoretically this could also translate as: (image of a) nymph on a mosaic (tesselated floor) - like the huge roman one of Ariadne in the Rue du Pavé in Avenche (Switzerland) [http://www.stub.unibe.ch/welten/texte/herzig.html german weblink]

Most likely not (the mosaic idea); this is a consecrated term for prostitute. Note: in French, pavé means cobblestone. --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:09, 3 March 2007 (PST)

'''geometric episode''' 
Vaguely reminiscent of Proust on Combray: "And on one of the longest walks we ever took from Combray there was a spot where the narrow road emerged suddenly on to an immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple, but so sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a landscape, to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this single indication of human existence." [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8swnn10.txt etext]

'''Engelmann spruce''' 
[http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=175 Picea engelmannii,] a light-colored, easily worked wood with fairly straight grain and slight contrast between heartwood and sapwood; [http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/boise/trees/engelmann.shtml uses include] piano sounding boards and the tops of violins and guitars, hence the association with the acoustics of the church.

A short biography of Dr. Engelmann (lit. Angel-Man) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Engelmann Wikipedia-Entry], more elaborated on [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Engelmann german site]

'''albatross cloth''' 
Evidently a distinct color/design for a wedding or wedding party dress in the West at the time. I have no OED at the moment, but there are at least two online "diaries" or descriptions using the phrase. Here is one: "We were married August 6, 1896 at 7:30 AM at my folk’s residence among friends and relatives. To honor the event, my folks had our parlor decorated with many flowers including roses, myrtle and geraniums. I wore an elegant gown of white silk and albatross cloth."

==Page 267==

'''Osterbybruk''' 
Town noted for ironmaking, 20 miles (32 km) north of Uppsala, eastern Sweden, nowhere near Jämtland (next entry).

The reference is probably more to a tune than a place. Swedish folk fiddlers, accordionists etc. have lots of bridal marches, waltzes etc. called after the place where they were composed/first used. There are collections of folk tunes from Österby bruk. I would guess that TRP has probably heard a recording of this kind of music.

'''Jemt-land''' 
A Province in west central Sweden [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland Wikipedia.] The hyphen is not part of the name and probably marks a syncopation in the rev's delivery.

'''Virgin bride''' 
Oh no she wasn't. See pp 190-191.

'''Child of the storm''' 
See the [http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/?s=child+of+the+storm ATD Weblog entry]. And page 190.

==Page 268==

'''sideways pussy''' 
Folklore.

'''side hobbles''' 
A hobble is a device for a horse or a dog that restricts the range of motion of the legs. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobble Wikipedia entry]. 
A [http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/archive/index.php/t-67850.html side hobble or Scotch hobble] links the horse's two left or two right legs, restricting its movement. 
"Hobble" also describes a type of skirt used (apparently) in bondage, see this [http://www.darksidecreations.com/product.asp?productid=19 example (not safe for work)] in latex.

==Page 269==

'''items, nearly always stolen''' 
Cf bower-bird.

'''marmot''' 
A stout-bodied, short-legged rodent that has coarse fur, a short bushy tail, and very short ears, lives in burrows, and hibernates in winter; also: a prairie dog or one of the larger ground squirrels. Marmots are native to Colorado and live at the higher altitudes. They are about the size of a weasel.

'''''"huevón"''''' 
From hueva (egg). According to [http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2004/06/huevon_and_guey.html this blog] huevon "literally refers to the size of a mans "cojones" (another pseudo decent word that has seen a lot of mainstream play). It is commonly used to indicate how lazy someone is. The bigger the "huevon" you are, the lazier. As with "guey", however, this too has often been used to say dude or buddy."

'''''pinche cabron''''' 
fucking asshole.

==Page 270==

'''same hour, just before dawn...he even bombs by the moon''' 
I.e., he waits for a favorable phase. People who "plant by the signs," for example, associate days of the lunar month to parts of the plant and of the human body. They sow squash (vines) under one sign and lettuce (leaves) under another; they sow nothing at all when the moon is waning. Would a moon-guided bomber blow up trestles (legs) at one phase and plutocrats (belly) at another?

Here we see that Webb is "deuced" again -- first by being killed by Deuce, second by having his modus [operandi] imitated.

The time signature for the modus is given in both solar terms -- "the same hour just before dawn" -- and lunar terms. Depending on the time of year, the bombings probably happen from 4am to 6am.

It would be interesting if the anarchists had esoteric moon teachings as to which moon position is best for success.

Given that the authorities know the time of day and that the moon is the same in a relative way, they pretty much can predict the time of the next bombing, they just don't know exactly where. Sort of a variation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Since TRP is conversant with astrology and the moon seems to be signaling ideas in AtD, it may be of interest to drill down into this passage a bit more from an astronomical, astrological perspective.

In the Northern Hemisphere, in the hours just before dawn, any visible moon will be a waning moon along the full to new moon spectrum. Vedic astrology calls this the Krishna Paksha or dark half of the full lunar cycle. A waning moon 72 degrees (approx) past full (a waning moon less than 108 degrees from the sun) takes on a negative, slightly malefic tone. If you had a clock where the sun was the hour hand stuck at noon, and the minute hand was the moon, the moon turns bad at 18 minutes to the hour and reaches it nadir in badness at the hour or new moon. 

Drilling down further, Indian astrological analysis considers the tithi. A tithi does not consider the stellar zodiacal place of the moon, but the angular distance between sun and moon -- in the clock metaphor, we look at the minute. Instead of the 8 phases of standard western classificaton, there are 30 tithis, each lasting a little less than a day. Each tithi has its own interpretation. 

If there were an esoteric aspect to anarchist bombing technique regarding an auspicious time for maximum destruction, it would perhaps be in the Mars-ruled 11th tithi (Ekadasi), a time of strong, energetic conflict, fighting, explosions. Such a moon can be seen the morning of Oct 6th, 2007. At 42 to 54 degress before new moon, it's analogous to the sun at noon and the moon at 7-9 minutes to the hour. It's your basic waning crescent moon. Further, this moon can be in the 12th house (loss and secret enemies) when the sun is predawn, but only for about 2.5 hours.
In Telluride, CO, on Oct 6th, 2007, this type of moon will be in the 12th house from about 3:14am to 5:42am with sunrise at 7:15am. So one could expect an explosion probably between first predawn light and 5:42am.

==Page 271==

'''"...sufficient unto the day and so forth"''' 
Deuce is reiterating Webb's own words from Matthew 6:34 [[ATD_81-96#Page 96]]"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

'''skip''' 
In mining, a skip is "an iron bucket, which slides between guides,
for hoisting mineral and rock." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) 

'''ex-Danite''' 
Danites were Joseph Smith's vigilantes, "Armies of Israel", during the Mormon War 1838 in Missouri, i.e., before travel to Utah.

'''"Avenging Angels"''' 
Refers to [http://www.ugca.org/ugca1099/ugca1099main.htm Civil War-vintage Colt pistols] usually with sawn off barrels.

==Page 272==

'''the Dolores''' 
Dolores River runs through Cortez (where Deuce seems to be, next to exploding cactus p270). "We woke up in the Dolores... [VALLEY/REGION/HOTEL]"

'''a luminous face suspended''' 

Some large convex object in the sky.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 199-218

2008-01-21T21:02:30Z

Gobbag: /* Page 200 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 199==

'''headed for Nevada''' 
From Denver or Golden the boys travel westward. Do they reach Nevada or just point in that direction? The scenic description may fit parts of Utah (between Colorado and Nevada) or Nevada proper. It's some 250 miles from Denver to the Utah-Nevada line; we learn that Jeshimon is a day's ride (say 100 miles?) from Nochecita, and also that you go south from Jeshimon to get to Telluride. And there's more: In Nochecita some visitors are identified as "Utahans," which suggests the town is not in Utah. 
The geography seems to work only if Nochecita is in western Colorado, not Nevada.

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night. We saw earlier [[ATD_1-25#Page_22|(see annotations to p. 22)]] that bright light is not a source of comfort while darkness can be; Nochecita should be a place of shelter.
 The online dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines [http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=nochecita nochecita] as "Crepúsculo vespertino", i.e. evening twilight.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too 
She is a star in the "little night."

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary], from the Latin ''natare'' - to swim.

'''stand literally ''in a circle'' around the couple as if enforcing the choice and allowing them no other''' 
Weddings in many places and times feature circles (circular ring, guests dancing in a circle, ribbon encircling the couple). A confining circle of guests does not seem to be a custom anywhere. Are these newly made "friends" pursuing some end we can't recognize—for example seeking to ensure a lineage?

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family. 
Frank will not be the last ''AtD'' character to hold himself out as an [[Idiots and Idiocy in Against the Day|idiot]].

==Page 202==

'''Cooper''' 
In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

:Scaled down just a bit, striking blue eyes, blond hair, "motor-wheelman," "injury . . . in his past." Everything but the name comes out [http://www.stevemcqueen.org.uk/ Steve McQueen] (1930-80). Not an identification but a distant resonance.

:Yeah, too much of a stretch to think it's Pynchon writing himself in. There was speculation that the character Osbie Feel in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' was just such an instance, and this one a bit more plausible. [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Osbie_Feel Check it out...]

:[[image:V-Twin.jpg|right|thumb|Mesa V-Twin Preamp & Stompbox|175px]]Also, could be a nod to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Cornell Chris Cornell], singer, guitarist & songwriter for Soundgarden and Audioslave. He's got that blond(ish) hair, that lip, was in a motorcycle accident, collaborated with Alice Cooper (on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Temptation ''The Last Temptation''], a 1994 "concept" album), &c &c. And here's the kicker: Chris often uses the [http://www.mesaboogie.com/Product_Info/Out_of%20_Production/V-Twin/v-twin.html Mesa Boogie V-Twin Preamp] which, by the way, has rubber tires, er, I mean, feet. So, in this context, I think Cornell's a good bet. And check the V-Twin logo which riffs off the Harley-Davidson logo. And, hey, this Cooper sings, writes songs and plays the guitar!

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller, but the V-twin layout did not come to market until ca. 1902 (Zedel, Switzerland). The first U.S. V-twin was apparently made by [http://www.ianchadwick.com/motorcycles/triumph/time01.html Indian] (1903). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harley_Davidson Harley-Davidson] got a V-twin motor into production in 1910 or 1911 (prototype 1907).

:More to the point, it's ''also'' a rocking preamp and stompbox, as noted above. A great example of Pynchon's setting up multiple resonances with names, here having "V-Twin" do multiple-duty as a guitar preamp, a motorcyle, twinning/doubling, and his ubiquitous V's.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a-ringin' a bell."

'''"the music, which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right."''' 
In Pynchon's first novel, [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_2#sphere ''V.''], saxophonist McClintic Sphere played "all the notes Bird missed" which itself was a nod to jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman whose raw, highly vocalized sound and penchant for playing "in the cracks" of the scale led many Los Angeles jazz musicians to regard his playing as out-of-tune." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornette_Coleman]

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

This is all far too tenous and speculative, surely?

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

Jackdaw in Czech is "Kafka" --[[User:jackmw|jackmw]] 18:28, 04 April 2007 (PST)

'''reading the ''Police Gazette'' or, actually, looking at the pictures''' 
[http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1330925 The ''National Police Gazette''] (published 1848-1980s) was the biggest men's magazine in the U.S. at the turn of the century, selling some 150,000 copies. Printed on pink paper, it contained sports reporting as well as crime stories, often with drawings of rumpled female victims. Photos of burlesque performers were a regular feature by the time of the action.

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

This is also an echo of the 'dorsal finality' framing of Constance Penhallow in Hunter's portrait back in Iceland.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
"Bucking the tiger" is an old euphemism for playing faro. [http://www.bcvc.net/faro/history.htm bcvc.net]

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

Pynchon must be laughing his tits off at some of this stuff. "Soul to soul" and "down Mexico way" are just expressions - that's how they found their way into songs. TRP is a bright guy and if he'd wanted for some reason to allude to Stevie Ray and Jimi at this particular point (why, for god's sake?) he'd have found a more satisfying way of doing it.

'''everything . . . proceeded down Mexico way''' 
A triple metaphor: (3) to proceed to Mexico from Colorado, you go south. (2) "Go south" evokes "Go west." (1) To go west is an expression from the World War meaning to die. 
The vast system of trenches in the war ran mainly north and south, with the Allies on the west. Going west meant getting finally withdrawn from the never-ending trench war. Soldiers would later say "go home in a bag." [http://www.worldwar1.com/heritage/wordswar.htm ''Gone west'' for "dead"] apparently predates ''gone south'' by a little. 
[http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/26/messages/584.html ''Gone south'' for "deteriorated"] is influenced by the preceding but also relies on customary map orientation: south = down. 
So ''everything proceeded down Mexico way'' means it all came undone, turned to disaster.

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
Jeshimon is typically rendered from Hebrew as desert or wasteland. It appears in the Bible, 1 Samuel 26:1, "And the Ziphites came unto Saul to Gibeah, saying, Doth not David hide himself in the hill of Hachilah, which is before Jeshimon?"

Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

There seem to be differences between commentators as to whether Jeshimon refers to a specific place or not (although the broad consensus is that it doesn't, but see for instance [http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Jeshimon NetBible]). So Jeshimon may or may not be an actual place but is certainly not pleasant to be in, befitting the mysterious, anarchic town of death in AtD

==Page 208==
'''Mortalidad''' 
Spanish for mortality.

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

'''leave it to hang there by its one foot''' 
The Governor shoots malefactors, then exposes them in this way, which calls to mind the Hanged Man in the Tarot deck.

'''Second Lutheran (Missouri Synod) Church''' 
A small town with ''two'' LCMS congregations really is covered up with churches. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is a traditionalist body with no bishops. Its heritage is strongly German, and half its members today live in the Upper Midwest.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

'''accommodations''' 
Decent burial.

'''subornation''' 
The act of inducing (a person) to commit an unlawful or evil act.

Reef learns that for a price even the "laws" here can be bent.

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

Plus, surely it can't remain unmentioned, this a spot-on piss-take of George 'Dubya' Bush, leader of the Free World (versus the 'Evildoers'), and a former execution-loving Governor.

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on. 
He traveled to Mortalidad by train and must have rented a horse to get to Jeshimon.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''shouldn't somebody ought to carry on the family business—you might say, become the Kid?''' 
The comic strip ''The Phantom'' stars something like the 22nd inheritor of his family business. The Queen of England is another parallel.

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]). The cover illustration suggests that the events in ''Ends of the Earth'' follow ''Bowels'' directly.

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''he thought he saw something familiar''' 
Sensitized by the (cleverly planted?) book, he sees ''Inconvenience'' conducting surveillance.

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

'''"Just greasy ashes by the trailside."''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke."

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

 Note that this is probably an anachronism. Franklin Rosemont's book on Joe Hill quotes a friend of Hill's, Alexander MacKay, stating he was "pretty damn positive" Joe Hill joined the IWW in 1910. [p. 46 of "Joe Hill - The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture".] The IWW wasn't even formed until 1905.

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's revolver; [[ATD_81-96#Page_88|see annotations to page 88,]] where it is first mentioned.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 243-272

2007-12-05T22:04:59Z

Gobbag: /* Page 249 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 243==

'''The Chums return''' 
When were the Chums last seen in AtD? As far back as page 142?

A brief reminder of who the Chums are and what we know about them so far:
:'''Randolph St. Cosmo''', commander.
:'''Lindsay Noseworth''', Master-at-Arms and second in command, hates slackers and slang.
:'''Miles Blundell''', handyman, awkward, with an "ample waist" (11), also ship's Commissary, whose cooking ranges from pure cordon bleu to inedible. (110)
:'''Darby Suckling''', the baby of the crew, served "as both factotum and mascotte". By page 141 or so, has transformed from spirited youth to bomb obsessed, (111) sneering, snide cynic. Because of hitting adolescence?
:'''Chick Counterfly''', the newest member of the crew, picked up by the Chums in the South while on the run from the KKK. At last appearance, had become Dr. Counterfly, knowledgeable Science Officer aboard the Inconvenience (141). Reliably humorous. (110). Chick's style of speech here seems intermediate between the country boy of the early chapters and the sophisticated Dr Counterfly who met the Vormance expedition. Are we also at an intermediate point on the timeline?

[[image:fumaioli.jpg|thumb|150px|Fumaioli in Venice|right]]
'''''fumaioli''''' 
Italian: ''funnels''; fumaioli are large wide-topped chimneys, common to the rooftops of Venice.

'''''certo''''' 
sure, certain.

'''''Seccatura''''' 
Italian: ''Inconvenience''

==Page 244==

'''''ragazza''''' 
Italian: ''girl''.

'''Picardy thirds''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. Miles seems just as moved by them as Lew. [[ATD_26-56#Page_50 | Cf p50]]

The gondolier is singing harmony with himself, or else Miles is imagining the accompaniment.

Picardie is also a region in northern France and "during the Middle Ages... included the Dutch speaking Flanders." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy] The region was a hotbed of action along the Western Front in WWI and played host to the Battle of the Somme, which totaled more than a million casualties and was "one of the bloodiest battles in human history."[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme]

'''''stabilimento''''' 
Italian: establishment.

==Page 245==
'''Garibaldi''' 
Famous Italian leader, major figure in the Italian Unification. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garibaldi Wikipedia]

'''''"Ehi, sugo!"''''' 
"Hey, sauce!" Does this make sense to anyone?
It does not make any sense in Italian.

'''twentyfold''' 
5 chums times 4 suspects each. (Randolph suspects Lindsay, Miles, Darby and Chick of being the leak; and so on around the crew. And that assumes no one suspects Pugnax!)

'''''osteria''''' 
tavern.

'''San Polo''' 
The smallest district/area in Venice, and among the oldest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Polo Wikipedia]

'''''rio''''' 
narrow waterway in Venice.

'''against the night''' 
OK...

'''''calli''''' 
Venetian 'street' or 'lane'.

==Page 246==

'''''sotoporteghi''''' 
passageways. See picture for one example [http://www.dialetto-veneto.it/images/FotoComano/Comano-Cattognano.jpg].

'''''"Sa stai, O! Lungo, ehi!"''''' 
It does not mean anything in Italian or in the Venetian dialect. One possibility is mimicking the callouts of gondoliers. ''Lungo'' could be someone's nickname. 
Other possibility is a wrong lettering of: ''Xa star, oh! Lungo, ehi!'', meaning ''Ehi, Lungo, let it be and let's go!'' or something similar.

'''''cameriere''''' 
Italian: waitresses (plural of ''cameriera'').

'''''pallonisti''''' 
(fake-)Italian: balloonists.

'''''Ehi, macché, Pina! ''''' 
Italian: Ehi, Giusep(Pina), what are you telling me?

'''''giadrul''''' 
Again, doesn't mean anything in Italian or Venetian dialect. Seems to be a [https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0007&L=irtrad-l&D=0&T=0&P=94630 term of insult], variously described as American-Italian only (see previous link) and southern Italian (see next). One source gives one meaning as "[http://it.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070318034908AAem49X zuccone]" - this appears to mean "[http://notes.tranq.com/archives/2004/01/23/zuccone/ pumpkinhead]". I guess we're looking for something phallic, given the context. 
(''as far as I can see, it is an American-Italian deformation of the correct italian word "citrullo", which in fact is some sort of "dumb ass", and is derived from neapolitan for "cetriolo", that is, "cucumber" '')

'''"with all the spaghetti-joints in this town to choose from, are you saying those dadblame Russians have come in ''here''?"''' 
reminiscent of a similar line from the film ''Casablanca'', spoken by Humphrey Bogart: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

==Page 247==

'''tacchino in pomegranate sauce''' 
turkey in pomegranate sauce and, presumably, the "Purple Thanksgiving" to which Miles refers above.

'''''Dum vivimus, bibamus''''' 
While we live, let us drink. Paraphrase of "Dum vivimus, vivamus".

'''vini frizzanti''' 
sparkling wine.

'''SANGUIS RUBER, MENS PURA''' 
Latin: Red blood, clean mind.

'''''Serrata del Maggior Consiglio''''' 
Great Council Lockout, 1297. Link to the "Maggior Consiglio" entry on Reference.com [http://www.reference.com/browse/all/Maggior%20Consiglio]

'''Napoleon's abolition''' 
1797. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia]

'''Polos' return''' 
Marco Polo together with his father and uncle returned to Venice in 1295 from their travel to China started in 1271. 

''Marco Polo'' (1254-1324), a Venetian traveller. Was born of a nobel family at Venice, while his father and uncle had gone on a mercantile expedition by Constantinople and the Crimea to Bokhara and to Cathy (China). The Mongol prince commissioned them as envoys to the Pope, a commission they tried in vain to carry out in Italy (1269). The Polos started again a new trip to China in 1271, taking with them young Marco,
and arrived at the court of Kublai Khan in 1275 by way of Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan to Lop Nor, then across the Gobi desert to Kansu and Shang-tu. Marco Polo entered the diplomatic service of Kublai Khan and was sent on missions to various parts of the Mongol empire. The Polos left China on 1282 and returned by way of Sumatra, India, and Persia to Venice (1295). In 1298 Marco was in command of a galley at the battle of Curzola, where the Venetians were defeated by the Genoese, and he was a prisoner for a year at Genoa. Here it was thought that he dictated to another captive an account of his travels, published under the title of ''Divisamemt dou monde''. (English title: ''The Travels of Marco Polo''.) ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo Marco Polo].)

''Kublai Khan'' (1214-94), Mongol khan, emperor of China, grandson of Jenghiz Khan. He completed the conquest of northern China and became the first foreigner ever to rule China. An enegetic prince, he suppressed his rivals, adopted the Chinese mode of civilisation, encouraged men of letters and made Buddhism the state religion. But his attempt to invade Japan ended in disaster. His dominions extended from Arctic Ocean to the Strait of Malacca, and from Korea to Asia Minor and the confines of Hungary. The splendor of his court inspired the graphic pages of Marco Polo. (from Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 1984 edition.)

==Page 248==

[[image:doge.jpg|thumb|100px|Doge by Giovanni Bellini|right]]'''Doge's hat''' 
For some thousand years, the chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice was styled the Doge, a rare but not unique Italian title derived from the Latin Dux, as the major Italian parallel Duce and the English Duke. Doges of Venice were elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia entry]

'''''Attenzione al culo''''' 
Italian: watch your ass.

'''Shambhala''' 
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is a mystical kingdom hidden somewhere beyond the snowpeaks of the Himalayas. Shambhala is believed to be a society where all the inhabitants are enlightened. During the 19th century, Theosophical Society founder H.P. Blavatsky alluded to the Shambhala myth, giving it currency for Western occult enthusiasts. Later esoteric writers further emphasized and elaborated on the concept of a hidden land inhabited by a hidden mystic brotherhood whose members labor for the good of humanity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambhala Wikipedia entry]

'''Professor Svegli of the University of Pisa''' 
The fictional professor's name comes from the Italian ''sveglio'' for "clever, dextrous, skillful."

'''"try to forget the usual picture in two dimensions"''' 
Cf. page 220, the idea behind the ''Tetractys'' as explained by Nigel and Neville.

'''an episode of intentional blindness''' 
Echoes the "denial of ordinary vision" that Lew sees when he meets Professor Renfrew (p. 240). Might these "blind spots" in sense evoke Iceland Spar?

==Page 249==

'''"Those whose enduring object is power in this world are only too happy to use without remorse the others, whose aim is of course to transcend all question of power. Each regards the other as a pack of deluded fools."''' 
Over time, Pynchon appears to have come to a belief in a massive conflict between cultures "valuing analysis and differentiation" and those valuing "unity and integration". The two alternate maps of Asia could be a reference to these disparate worldviews.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. Wikipedia entry on V.]

'''The problem lies with the projection''' 
(a) Projection by each group of its own obsession onto the other group. (b) Cartographic projection, i.e., how the round world gets imaged onto a flat sheet of paper.

'''Imaginary surface''' 
Presumably meant to mean (or at least allude to) imaginary in the mathematical sense: involving the square root of -1.

'''paramorphoscope''' 
AtD is itself a paramorphoscope; satire and science fiction typically hold up a distorting mirror to the world in which they are written, and present worlds "set to the side of the one we have taken". In the end the correct paramorphic "mirror" shows the world clearly.

'''"a certain percentage of them went mad and ended up in the asylum on San Servolo"''' 
Cf. the Northern Ohio Insane Asylum with its light-obsessed inmates at [[ATD_57-80#Page_59|page 59]].

'''the asylum on San Servolo''' 
First established as a military hospital in 1715, later became a mental asylum. Seems that San Servolo is to Venice what Bedlam is to London. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo Wikipedia]

'''Clifford's term''' 
W.K. Clifford, (1845-1879): an English mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford Wikipedia]

==Page 250==

[[Image:stmarks.jpg|thumb|200px|right|St Mark's Basilica (Basilica di San Marco) in Venice]]
'''Dr. Cantor''' 
Georg Cantor (1845 - 1918), German mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_theorem Cantor's Theorem] is what is most relevant to his mention here.

'''the plano-convex designs of Griendl von Ach''' 
For a brief history of the compound-lens microscope, and the roles played by the Italians and the Dutch, including Griendl von Ach, see:
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Microscope

'''prophetic vision of St. Mark''' 
Mark the Evangelist (1st century) is traditionally believed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark and a companion of Peter. From [http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brown-venice.html this site]: "...a prophetic dream that Mark was said to have experienced during his earlier, supposed ministry in the area of the Venetian lagoon. In it he was visited by an angel who told him that he would find his final resting place on the very site where San Marco would later be built." In the first century there was no settlement worth mentioning in the Lagoon yet. The prophecy was "fulfilled" in 828 when the saint's remains stolen on orders of Doge Giustiniano Participazio in Alexandria were brought to Venice. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_the_Evangelist Wikipedia entry] St. Mark is represented by a winged lion and is the patron saint of Venice [http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/saintm08.htm].

'''''but in reverse''''' 
Miles now takes the place of the angel. Who or what is the "Being" and what form does the prophecy take?

'''neither sails, masts, nor oars''' 
Not a craft that is driven by the wind or human muscle. To say more could spoil a plot point.

==Page 251==

[[Image:stmarklion.jpg|thumb|600px|center|The Lion of St. Mark, by Carpaccio]]

'''Lion of St. Mark by Carpaccion''' 
Vittore Carpaccio (c.1460–1525/6) was a Venetian painter. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittore_Carpaccio Wikipedia entry]

'''the vision of St. Mark, but in reverse''' 
In St. Mark's vision, an angel appeared to Mark and informed him that his remains would one day end up in his present location, which later became Venice. Here, Miles seems to assume the form of the angel (in the form of a lion?) and the 'promise' Pynchon mentions seems to be the angel's promise to Mark.

'''our own duty, our own fate... the real journey''' 
Pynchon's one-paragraph summation of human life and its meaning recalls a letter Pynchon wrote in the early 1960s, [[The_World_is_at_Fault|The World is at Fault]], in which he also summed up the entirety of human life in a few tidy sentences. Both employ the word 'pilgrimage.'

==Page 252==

'''''sotopòrteghi''''' 
Tunnels or passageways under large buildings.

'''tenebrous''' 
Means "shadowy" but is also a link back to the previous paragraph. The Tenebrae Service is a special form that is meant to recreate the feelings of the Passion story, also represented by the Stations of the Cross.

'''Renata''' 
Note that Renata is the name of the female protagonist in Ernest Hemingway's ''Across the River and into the Trees'', set in Venice.

'''Glagolitic''' 
The Glagolitic Alphabet is the oldest known Slavic alphabet (9th c.). It originated as a tactic to lessen the dependence of the subjects of the Prince of Greater Moravia on Frankish priests, who banned it but could not suppress it; it played a similar role in preserving Bulgarian independence from Byzantium. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic] It appears to be a nexus of the kind of simultaneous temporal and spiritual tasks the Chums of Chance are now involved in. In this, it raises the issues first explored by Pynchon in the "Tchitcherine in Kyrghizia" sections of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in which the introduction of a written alphabet causes immense political and social change.

'''Gauloise''' 
famous French cigarette. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauloise Wikipedia].

'''''scusi''''' 
Italian: Excuse me.

'''''Affascinante, caro''''' 
Italian: Fascinating, dear (addressed to a male person).

'''''ragazzo''''' 
Italian: Boy.

'''''Mattoidi''''' 
Italian: Semi-insane persons. The word was [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-mat1.htm coined by Cesare Lombroso,] the physiognomist.

'''''Prego''''' 
Italian: Please.

==Page 253==

'''Pozzuoli''' 
A city in the Province of Naples (''Napoli'') in the region of Campania. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzuoli Wikipedia].

'''The Tarocchi are much, much older.''' 
Not at all! This is one of those ideas that rarely gets questioned, especially since some "interpreters" of the tarot claim ancient Egyptian origins. The actually only [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot date back to the 15th century], as playing cards, and tarot divination was invented in the 19th century, with absolutely no historical precedent.

However, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley Aleister Crowley] in his writings and the design of his own version of the tarot, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Thoth_(Crowley) Thoth Deck], made a case for the Tarot unifying and being rooted in much older divination methods from Ancient egypt to the[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] to Greek [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology astrology]. Crowley's Golden Dawn gets a previous mention in ATD. Though work on the Thoth deck would not begin until 1938, Crowley´s assignment of the Kabbalah's [http://jktarot.com/naples Sephiroth to the major arcana] probably bears attention when considering the chapter structure of ATD: he called the correspondence "The Naples Arrangement" in honour of having worked it out there, and this passage's mention of Renata's business associate being in Naples at this moment is unlikely to be coincidence.
:Surely a robust skepticism toward Crowley and his research methods is in order? Consider, for example, this [http://www.tarothermit.com/letter.htm "open letter"] to tarot users—from a judicious scholar and believer, not a committed skeptic—making the point that if the cards embody images (of whatever origin) "speaking" to the reader or student, it isn't essential to press the further claim that they were invented by the god Thoth. The paintings lack a couple of millennia of "temporal bandwidth" but aren't necessarily voided of appeal by that, any more than Michelangelo's ''Pietà'' is a less-valid devotional object for having been sculpted 1500 years after the event.

'''''sfumato''''' 
Refers to a well known painting method which blends so subtly the colors and tones that no perceptible transition is visible, as demonstrated by Leonardo da Vince's ''Mona Lisa''. See [http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato Wikipedia]. 
The context seems to imply ''smoke'', then ''fumo'' instead should be used.
:No, the evocation of the painterly effect becomes a metaphor for the way the boat comes into sight.

==Page 254==

'''''Pax tibi, Darbe''''' 
Latin: Peace to you, Darby. ''Pax tibi'' is not at all obscure—devout Catholics used it as a parting formula—but Chick has Latinized Darby's name to ''Darbus'' (vocative case ''Darbe'') and may be consciously echoing the text in [[#Page_251|Carpaccio's lion painting]] or on a [[#Page_247|pre-Napoleonic]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Most_Serene_Republic_of_Venice.svg flag of the Most Serene Republic of Venice:] ''Pax tibi Marce evangelista meus,'' "Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist."

'''like some damned ''Farewell'' Symphony''' 
Franz Josef Haydn, 1772, Hungary. Musicians at Count Esterházy's court had been kept too long on duty (and away from their families). Going on strike would have been disrespectful, so in the last movement of Haydn's hinting work, the players one by one extinguish their candles and exit, leaving two violins to play the last phrases.

'''"Chums of Chance were expected to die on the job. Or else live forever, there being two schools of thought, actually."''' 
Possibly a reference to the fact that the Chums seem to live simultaneously in the "real" world of the novel and also in fictional stories within the novel.

==Page 255==

'''Mostruccio''' 
Italian, literally: small monster, meant as a lovely nickname.

[[Image:samoyeds.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Samoyeds]]
'''Samoyeds''' 
These nomadic reindeer herders help with the herding, pull sleds, and are sometimes called "the smiley dog" in reference to their seemingly smiling faces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoyed_(dog) Wikipedia]

'''Bastille Day''' 
The Campanile di San Marco collapsed 14 July 1902. Pynchon Wiki on the [[Campanile]].

'''''lasagnoni''''' 
Italian, plural of ''lasagnone'': Blowhard, braggart.

A hint may come from an Italian dictionary: a ''lasagnone'' being an awkward, simple person, the kind of loafers who abound on city squares or street corners and, consequently, may appear in tourists' pictures.

==Page 256==
[[Image:Campanile.jpg|thumb|200px|right]]

'''dual citizenship''' 
They live in two places, there are two skycraft, they point a gun at one place but the shell strikes a different place. Lots of '''bi-''' somethings in this passage.

'''the little-understood enigmata of the simultaneous''' 
The concept of simultaneous events, including the accurate definition and, moreover, the very ''need'' of such a definition, played a significant role in the soon-to-be formulated [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity Special Relativity Theory]. One of the main consequences of the theory is the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity relativity of simultaneity].

'''four-brick groupings''' 
Padzhitnoff sees the Campanile come apart as a game of Tetris! The "four-brick groupings [...] begin their gentle, undeadly descent, rotating and translating in all available modes". (See [[ATD_119-148#Page_123|page 123]] for more on Tetris.)

'''the tower collapses''' 
Might have some relation to the final poem of ''Gravity's Rainbow''. The fall of the tower is foreshadowed -- foretold, actually -- in Chick´s Tarot reading by Renata (See [[ATD_243-272#Page_253|page 253]]).

==Page 257==

'''What stood for a thousand years''' 
Pretty close: Construction of the Campanile began in the year 912.

'''deciduous''' 
Something that falls, drops or is shed, like leaves from a tree or baby teeth.

'''We had the weather-gauge''' 
In the days of sail, [http://www.weathergage.com/ weather gage] described the relative position of two ships or forces. If you were downwind you could run or, if you meant to engage the enemy, tack to approach him. Every time you changed tack you lost an opportunity to shoot (because your guns pointed left and right). If you lay upwind, you could keep your guns trained on the enemy throughout the engagement. The weather gage was an often decisive battle advantage, and the phrase is common in nautical narratives.

'''neuræsthenic prostration''' 
This is the third (at least) time Randolph has exhibited this tendency.

:This is the third time that this word has appeared so far, but in the second instance (page 188) it was used by Nigel to describe Lew Basnight, not Randolph.

:Not the word, but this reaction in Randolph occurred on pages 12 and 28. It seems to be a regular thing with him.

==Page 258==

'''Tetralith''' 
Modern math term for three dimensional solid formed by merging three hyperbolic paraboloids in a manner that they have a common midpoint. See [http://www.tetranometry.com/#tetralith Tetralith Photo #2]. Pynchon just means a Tetris-shaped projectile, a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetromino Tetromino].
:A "monolith" (as in ''2001: A Space Odyssey'')means an "object made of a single block of stone". Hence "tetralith" means an "object made of four blocks of stone", which is exactly what you see on the game "Tetris".

'''Japanese character for "four" being same as that for "death"''' 
Not quite correct. The Japanese kanji (Chinese) characters for four 四 and death 死 are quite distinct, but can be pronounced in the same way, hence the taboo.

'''Ryohei Uchida''' 
Ultra-nationalist, founder of the Black Dragon Soceity (see below), a right-wing, paramilitary organization. See [http://members.tripod.com/ravenshrine/uchida.html Ryohei Uchida].

'''''polny pizdets''''' 
Crude Russian: a total screwup.

'''Black Dragon Society''' 
A paramiltary, ultra-nationalist, right-wing organization in Japan founded by Ryohei Uchida in 1901. Its initial public goal was to support Janpanese expansion in Manchuria. Therefore, during the period from 1901 to the end of World War I, it aimed to help the Japanese government drive the Russian presence out of that region. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 (a war fought over Manchuria, with the Russians soundly defeated) it was active in espionage, sabotage and assassination against the Russians. During the 20's, 30's and later periods the Black Dragon Society evolved and expanded its activities around the world, including the United States. It was finally disbanded in 1946 by General MacArthur after World War II. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuryu-kai Wikipedia entry].

'''''Smirno''''' 
Russian: quiet!

==Page 259==

'''''dov'era, com'era''''' 
Italian: where it was, as it was. See [http://veniceblog.typepad.com/veniceblog/2003/12/comera_dovera.html veniceblog]. On July 14, 1902 the St. Mark's Campanile in Piazza San Marco, Venice, mysteriously and totally collapsed. Under the 'battle cry' of '''''com'era, dov'era''''' it was rebuilt. The Campanile was reopened on April 25 (St. Mark's Day) 1912. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark's_Campanile St. Mark's Campanile]. Also, Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 256|page 256:the tower collapses]].

''''La Marangona''''' 
The largest bell in the campanile is called la Marangona. At midnight, that massive bell resounds alone from high in the Piazza, and can be heard from almost any point in the city. There are four other bells in the campanile and they each have a name.

'''"Bells are the most ancient objects. They call to us out of eternity"''' 
This chapter is bookended by references to bells. It opens, "Across the city noontide a field of bells emerged into flower."

==Page 260==

'''Deuce and Sloat return''' 
These two, it will be recalled, are the men hired by the mine owners to kill Webb Traverse. (193) It is unclear who is whose sidekick. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_195|195]]) Sloat tends to bodies, Deuce the spirit. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_197|197]])

'''Curly Dee''' 
Mathematicians call the "partial derivative" symbol "curly d." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_derivative Wikipedia shows the symbol.]

'''inside out''' 
Optical illusion.

==Page 261==

'''Nonpareil Eating House''' 
The motto over the door was probably "None Like It!"

'''Mayva and Lake''' 
Webb Traverse's wife and daughter.

'''lard smoke''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke," and p. 216, "Just greasy ashes by the trailside."

'''biscuit-shooter''' 
I.e., a cook.

'''Cañon City''' 
Site of the Colorado State Penitentiary, meant to suggest Deuce and Sloat had done time there.

'''gong''' 
???
17:18, 1 January 2007 (PST)[[User:Bklyn48|Bklyn48]]
 "kicking the gong around" is slang for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnie_the_Moocher smoking opium]. Here, Sloat seems to mean that Deuce's opium smoking has affected his judgement.

==Page 262==

'''Willis Turnstone''' 
Turnstones are members of the sandpiper family, stocky birds that use their stout bills to flip over rocks and such in search of food. There are two species: Black Turnstone (''Arenaria melanocephala'') and Ruddy Turnstone (''A. interpres''). The [http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Ruddy_Turnstone.html Ruddy's] breeding plumage is a bold calico of white, orange, and black.

==Page 263==

'''"Crazier."''' 
Cf Bonnie and Clyde.

'''Oleander Prudge''' 
A name that brings joy to the heart of any Dickensian who happens to be reading along.

==Page 264==

'''single-jacker''' 
A miner who with a hammer and spike cuts a hole into rock for placement of a stick of dynamite. A set of holes are cut for each "synchronized" blast.
(Double jackers work as a team.)
Infer (this) one as a loner, a bit crazy, single minded, silent, easily hurt or misunderstood, doesn't play well with others...

'''How I feel about Mr. Kindred...and...Webb Traverse are two different things''' 

This is an interesting exchange between Lake and Oleander Prudge. Clearly Oleander hits a nerve as Lake spills the hotcakes. Lake goes into denial, saying her love of someone she would normally hate (Deuce -- her father's killer) and hating someone she would normally love (her father Webb) are "two different things."

Oleanders rejoinder, "they can't be," has the finality of a mathematical proof.

It's as if Lake is looking at passion through an emotional lense of iceland spar and sees two sets of images (father/lover, hate/love)and wants to believe they're different, whereas Oleander sees that in fact they are one. This won't be the last time Lake gets herself a "twofer."

==Page 265==

'''backing away down the valley''' 
It's instructive to look at a [http://www.vacationtelluride.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=standard&categoryId=11&subCategoryId=0 map or satellite photo of Telluride.] You could very well lay a single track from the mouth of the valley up to the town, but no farther. So the train drives into the station, then backs out until there's room for a spur where it can turn around.

'''gullet of days''' 
Metaphor. The miners' lives "as easily (as jug whisky)disappeared down the throat of everyday life".

==Page 266==

'''white-throated swift''' 
A swift is a small plainly colored bird similar to a swallow. The [http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/187/_/White-throated_Swift.aspx white-throated species,] which breeds in the western U.S. and winters in Mexico, is less plain than some. And get the species name: '''''Aeronaut'''es saxatalis.''

'''November''' 
November 1903.

'''in January, martial law''' 
January 3, 1904.

'''nymph du pave''' 
should probably read "nymphE du pave": [http://dict.die.net/nymphe%20du%20pave/ street-whore]. Theoretically this could also translate as: (image of a) nymph on a mosaic (tesselated floor) - like the huge roman one of Ariadne in the Rue du Pavé in Avenche (Switzerland) [http://www.stub.unibe.ch/welten/texte/herzig.html german weblink]

Most likely not (the mosaic idea); this is a consecrated term for prostitute. Note: in French, pavé means cobblestone. --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:09, 3 March 2007 (PST)

'''geometric episode''' 
Vaguely reminiscent of Proust on Combray: "And on one of the longest walks we ever took from Combray there was a spot where the narrow road emerged suddenly on to an immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple, but so sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a landscape, to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this single indication of human existence." [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8swnn10.txt etext]

'''Engelmann spruce''' 
[http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=175 Picea engelmannii,] a light-colored, easily worked wood with fairly straight grain and slight contrast between heartwood and sapwood; [http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/boise/trees/engelmann.shtml uses include] piano sounding boards and the tops of violins and guitars, hence the association with the acoustics of the church.

A short biography of Dr. Engelmann (lit. Angel-Man) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Engelmann Wikipedia-Entry], more elaborated on [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Engelmann german site]

'''albatross cloth''' 
Evidently a distinct color/design for a wedding or wedding party dress in the West at the time. I have no OED at the moment, but there are at least two online "diaries" or descriptions using the phrase. Here is one: "We were married August 6, 1896 at 7:30 AM at my folk’s residence among friends and relatives. To honor the event, my folks had our parlor decorated with many flowers including roses, myrtle and geraniums. I wore an elegant gown of white silk and albatross cloth."

==Page 267==

'''Osterbybruk''' 
Town noted for ironmaking, 20 miles (32 km) north of Uppsala, eastern Sweden, nowhere near Jämtland (next entry).

'''Jemt-land''' 
A Province in west central Sweden [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland Wikipedia.] The hyphen is not part of the name and probably marks a syncopation in the rev's delivery.

'''Child of the storm''' 
See the [http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/?s=child+of+the+storm ATD Weblog entry].

==Page 268==

'''sideways pussy''' 
Folklore.

'''side hobbles''' 
A hobble is a device for a horse or a dog that restricts the range of motion of the legs. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobble Wikipedia entry]. 
A [http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/archive/index.php/t-67850.html side hobble or Scotch hobble] links the horse's two left or two right legs, restricting its movement. 
"Hobble" also describes a type of skirt used (apparently) in bondage, see this [http://www.darksidecreations.com/product.asp?productid=19 example (not safe for work)] in latex.

==Page 269==

'''items, nearly always stolen''' 
Cf bower-bird.

'''marmot''' 
A stout-bodied, short-legged rodent that has coarse fur, a short bushy tail, and very short ears, lives in burrows, and hibernates in winter; also: a prairie dog or one of the larger ground squirrels. Marmots are native to Colorado and live at the higher altitudes. They are about the size of a weasel.

'''''"huevón"''''' 
From hueva (egg). According to [http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2004/06/huevon_and_guey.html this blog] huevon "literally refers to the size of a mans "cojones" (another pseudo decent word that has seen a lot of mainstream play). It is commonly used to indicate how lazy someone is. The bigger the "huevon" you are, the lazier. As with "guey", however, this too has often been used to say dude or buddy."

'''''pinche cabron''''' 
fucking asshole.

==Page 270==

'''same hour, just before dawn...he even bombs by the moon''' 
I.e., he waits for a favorable phase. People who "plant by the signs," for example, associate days of the lunar month to parts of the plant and of the human body. They sow squash (vines) under one sign and lettuce (leaves) under another; they sow nothing at all when the moon is waning. Would a moon-guided bomber blow up trestles (legs) at one phase and plutocrats (belly) at another?

Here we see that Webb is "deuced" again -- first by being killed by Deuce, second by having his modus [operandi] imitated.

The time signature for the modus is given in both solar terms -- "the same hour just before dawn" -- and lunar terms. Depending on the time of year, the bombings probably happen from 4am to 6am.

It would be interesting if the anarchists had esoteric moon teachings as to which moon position is best for success.

Given that the authorities know the time of day and that the moon is the same in a relative way, they pretty much can predict the time of the next bombing, they just don't know exactly where. Sort of a variation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Since TRP is conversant with astrology and the moon seems to be signaling ideas in AtD, it may be of interest to drill down into this passage a bit more from an astronomical, astrological perspective.

In the Northern Hemisphere, in the hours just before dawn, any visible moon will be a waning moon along the full to new moon spectrum. Vedic astrology calls this the Krishna Paksha or dark half of the full lunar cycle. A waning moon 72 degrees (approx) past full (a waning moon less than 108 degrees from the sun) takes on a negative, slightly malefic tone. If you had a clock where the sun was the hour hand stuck at noon, and the minute hand was the moon, the moon turns bad at 18 minutes to the hour and reaches it nadir in badness at the hour or new moon. 

Drilling down further, Indian astrological analysis considers the tithi. A tithi does not consider the stellar zodiacal place of the moon, but the angular distance between sun and moon -- in the clock metaphor, we look at the minute. Instead of the 8 phases of standard western classificaton, there are 30 tithis, each lasting a little less than a day. Each tithi has its own interpretation. 

If there were an esoteric aspect to anarchist bombing technique regarding an auspicious time for maximum destruction, it would perhaps be in the Mars-ruled 11th tithi (Ekadasi), a time of strong, energetic conflict, fighting, explosions. Such a moon can be seen the morning of Oct 6th, 2007. At 42 to 54 degress before new moon, it's analogous to the sun at noon and the moon at 7-9 minutes to the hour. It's your basic waning crescent moon. Further, this moon can be in the 12th house (loss and secret enemies) when the sun is predawn, but only for about 2.5 hours.
In Telluride, CO, on Oct 6th, 2007, this type of moon will be in the 12th house from about 3:14am to 5:42am with sunrise at 7:15am. So one could expect an explosion probably between first predawn light and 5:42am.

==Page 271==

'''"...sufficient unto the day and so forth"''' 
Deuce is reiterating Webb's own words from Matthew 6:34 [[ATD_81-96#Page 96]]"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

'''skip''' 
In mining, a skip is "an iron bucket, which slides between guides,
for hoisting mineral and rock." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) 

'''ex-Danite''' 
Danites were Joseph Smith's vigilantes, "Armies of Israel", during the Mormon War 1838 in Missouri, i.e., before travel to Utah.

'''"Avenging Angels"''' 
Refers to [http://www.ugca.org/ugca1099/ugca1099main.htm Civil War-vintage Colt pistols] usually with sawn off barrels.

==Page 272==

'''the Dolores''' 
Dolores River runs through Cortez (where Deuce seems to be, next to exploding cactus p270). "We woke up in the Dolores... [VALLEY/REGION/HOTEL]"

'''a luminous face suspended''' 

Some large convex object in the sky.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 243-272

2007-12-05T22:02:45Z

Gobbag: /* Page 249 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 243==

'''The Chums return''' 
When were the Chums last seen in AtD? As far back as page 142?

A brief reminder of who the Chums are and what we know about them so far:
:'''Randolph St. Cosmo''', commander.
:'''Lindsay Noseworth''', Master-at-Arms and second in command, hates slackers and slang.
:'''Miles Blundell''', handyman, awkward, with an "ample waist" (11), also ship's Commissary, whose cooking ranges from pure cordon bleu to inedible. (110)
:'''Darby Suckling''', the baby of the crew, served "as both factotum and mascotte". By page 141 or so, has transformed from spirited youth to bomb obsessed, (111) sneering, snide cynic. Because of hitting adolescence?
:'''Chick Counterfly''', the newest member of the crew, picked up by the Chums in the South while on the run from the KKK. At last appearance, had become Dr. Counterfly, knowledgeable Science Officer aboard the Inconvenience (141). Reliably humorous. (110). Chick's style of speech here seems intermediate between the country boy of the early chapters and the sophisticated Dr Counterfly who met the Vormance expedition. Are we also at an intermediate point on the timeline?

[[image:fumaioli.jpg|thumb|150px|Fumaioli in Venice|right]]
'''''fumaioli''''' 
Italian: ''funnels''; fumaioli are large wide-topped chimneys, common to the rooftops of Venice.

'''''certo''''' 
sure, certain.

'''''Seccatura''''' 
Italian: ''Inconvenience''

==Page 244==

'''''ragazza''''' 
Italian: ''girl''.

'''Picardy thirds''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. Miles seems just as moved by them as Lew. [[ATD_26-56#Page_50 | Cf p50]]

The gondolier is singing harmony with himself, or else Miles is imagining the accompaniment.

Picardie is also a region in northern France and "during the Middle Ages... included the Dutch speaking Flanders." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy] The region was a hotbed of action along the Western Front in WWI and played host to the Battle of the Somme, which totaled more than a million casualties and was "one of the bloodiest battles in human history."[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme]

'''''stabilimento''''' 
Italian: establishment.

==Page 245==
'''Garibaldi''' 
Famous Italian leader, major figure in the Italian Unification. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garibaldi Wikipedia]

'''''"Ehi, sugo!"''''' 
"Hey, sauce!" Does this make sense to anyone?
It does not make any sense in Italian.

'''twentyfold''' 
5 chums times 4 suspects each. (Randolph suspects Lindsay, Miles, Darby and Chick of being the leak; and so on around the crew. And that assumes no one suspects Pugnax!)

'''''osteria''''' 
tavern.

'''San Polo''' 
The smallest district/area in Venice, and among the oldest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Polo Wikipedia]

'''''rio''''' 
narrow waterway in Venice.

'''against the night''' 
OK...

'''''calli''''' 
Venetian 'street' or 'lane'.

==Page 246==

'''''sotoporteghi''''' 
passageways. See picture for one example [http://www.dialetto-veneto.it/images/FotoComano/Comano-Cattognano.jpg].

'''''"Sa stai, O! Lungo, ehi!"''''' 
It does not mean anything in Italian or in the Venetian dialect. One possibility is mimicking the callouts of gondoliers. ''Lungo'' could be someone's nickname. 
Other possibility is a wrong lettering of: ''Xa star, oh! Lungo, ehi!'', meaning ''Ehi, Lungo, let it be and let's go!'' or something similar.

'''''cameriere''''' 
Italian: waitresses (plural of ''cameriera'').

'''''pallonisti''''' 
(fake-)Italian: balloonists.

'''''Ehi, macché, Pina! ''''' 
Italian: Ehi, Giusep(Pina), what are you telling me?

'''''giadrul''''' 
Again, doesn't mean anything in Italian or Venetian dialect. Seems to be a [https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0007&L=irtrad-l&D=0&T=0&P=94630 term of insult], variously described as American-Italian only (see previous link) and southern Italian (see next). One source gives one meaning as "[http://it.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070318034908AAem49X zuccone]" - this appears to mean "[http://notes.tranq.com/archives/2004/01/23/zuccone/ pumpkinhead]". I guess we're looking for something phallic, given the context. 
(''as far as I can see, it is an American-Italian deformation of the correct italian word "citrullo", which in fact is some sort of "dumb ass", and is derived from neapolitan for "cetriolo", that is, "cucumber" '')

'''"with all the spaghetti-joints in this town to choose from, are you saying those dadblame Russians have come in ''here''?"''' 
reminiscent of a similar line from the film ''Casablanca'', spoken by Humphrey Bogart: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

==Page 247==

'''tacchino in pomegranate sauce''' 
turkey in pomegranate sauce and, presumably, the "Purple Thanksgiving" to which Miles refers above.

'''''Dum vivimus, bibamus''''' 
While we live, let us drink. Paraphrase of "Dum vivimus, vivamus".

'''vini frizzanti''' 
sparkling wine.

'''SANGUIS RUBER, MENS PURA''' 
Latin: Red blood, clean mind.

'''''Serrata del Maggior Consiglio''''' 
Great Council Lockout, 1297. Link to the "Maggior Consiglio" entry on Reference.com [http://www.reference.com/browse/all/Maggior%20Consiglio]

'''Napoleon's abolition''' 
1797. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia]

'''Polos' return''' 
Marco Polo together with his father and uncle returned to Venice in 1295 from their travel to China started in 1271. 

''Marco Polo'' (1254-1324), a Venetian traveller. Was born of a nobel family at Venice, while his father and uncle had gone on a mercantile expedition by Constantinople and the Crimea to Bokhara and to Cathy (China). The Mongol prince commissioned them as envoys to the Pope, a commission they tried in vain to carry out in Italy (1269). The Polos started again a new trip to China in 1271, taking with them young Marco,
and arrived at the court of Kublai Khan in 1275 by way of Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan to Lop Nor, then across the Gobi desert to Kansu and Shang-tu. Marco Polo entered the diplomatic service of Kublai Khan and was sent on missions to various parts of the Mongol empire. The Polos left China on 1282 and returned by way of Sumatra, India, and Persia to Venice (1295). In 1298 Marco was in command of a galley at the battle of Curzola, where the Venetians were defeated by the Genoese, and he was a prisoner for a year at Genoa. Here it was thought that he dictated to another captive an account of his travels, published under the title of ''Divisamemt dou monde''. (English title: ''The Travels of Marco Polo''.) ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo Marco Polo].)

''Kublai Khan'' (1214-94), Mongol khan, emperor of China, grandson of Jenghiz Khan. He completed the conquest of northern China and became the first foreigner ever to rule China. An enegetic prince, he suppressed his rivals, adopted the Chinese mode of civilisation, encouraged men of letters and made Buddhism the state religion. But his attempt to invade Japan ended in disaster. His dominions extended from Arctic Ocean to the Strait of Malacca, and from Korea to Asia Minor and the confines of Hungary. The splendor of his court inspired the graphic pages of Marco Polo. (from Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 1984 edition.)

==Page 248==

[[image:doge.jpg|thumb|100px|Doge by Giovanni Bellini|right]]'''Doge's hat''' 
For some thousand years, the chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice was styled the Doge, a rare but not unique Italian title derived from the Latin Dux, as the major Italian parallel Duce and the English Duke. Doges of Venice were elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia entry]

'''''Attenzione al culo''''' 
Italian: watch your ass.

'''Shambhala''' 
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is a mystical kingdom hidden somewhere beyond the snowpeaks of the Himalayas. Shambhala is believed to be a society where all the inhabitants are enlightened. During the 19th century, Theosophical Society founder H.P. Blavatsky alluded to the Shambhala myth, giving it currency for Western occult enthusiasts. Later esoteric writers further emphasized and elaborated on the concept of a hidden land inhabited by a hidden mystic brotherhood whose members labor for the good of humanity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambhala Wikipedia entry]

'''Professor Svegli of the University of Pisa''' 
The fictional professor's name comes from the Italian ''sveglio'' for "clever, dextrous, skillful."

'''"try to forget the usual picture in two dimensions"''' 
Cf. page 220, the idea behind the ''Tetractys'' as explained by Nigel and Neville.

'''an episode of intentional blindness''' 
Echoes the "denial of ordinary vision" that Lew sees when he meets Professor Renfrew (p. 240). Might these "blind spots" in sense evoke Iceland Spar?

==Page 249==

'''"Those whose enduring object is power in this world are only too happy to use without remorse the others, whose aim is of course to transcend all question of power. Each regards the other as a pack of deluded fools."''' 
Over time, Pynchon appears to have come to a belief in a massive conflict between cultures "valuing analysis and differentiation" and those valuing "unity and integration". The two alternate maps of Asia could be a reference to these disparate worldviews.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. Wikipedia entry on V.]

'''The problem lies with the projection''' 
(a) Projection by each group of its own obsession onto the other group. (b) Cartographic projection, i.e., how the round world gets imaged onto a flat sheet of paper.

'''Imaginary surface''' 
Presumably meant to mean imaginary in the mathematical sense: involving the square root of -1.

'''paramorphoscope''' 
AtD is itself a paramorphoscope; satire and science fiction typically hold up a distorting mirror to the world in which they are written, and present worlds "set to the side of the one we have taken". In the end the correct paramorphic "mirror" shows the world clearly.

'''"a certain percentage of them went mad and ended up in the asylum on San Servolo"''' 
Cf. the Northern Ohio Insane Asylum with its light-obsessed inmates at [[ATD_57-80#Page_59|page 59]].

'''the asylum on San Servolo''' 
First established as a military hospital in 1715, later became a mental asylum. Seems that San Servolo is to Venice what Bedlam is to London. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo Wikipedia]

'''Clifford's term''' 
W.K. Clifford, (1845-1879): an English mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford Wikipedia]

==Page 250==

[[Image:stmarks.jpg|thumb|200px|right|St Mark's Basilica (Basilica di San Marco) in Venice]]
'''Dr. Cantor''' 
Georg Cantor (1845 - 1918), German mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_theorem Cantor's Theorem] is what is most relevant to his mention here.

'''the plano-convex designs of Griendl von Ach''' 
For a brief history of the compound-lens microscope, and the roles played by the Italians and the Dutch, including Griendl von Ach, see:
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Microscope

'''prophetic vision of St. Mark''' 
Mark the Evangelist (1st century) is traditionally believed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark and a companion of Peter. From [http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brown-venice.html this site]: "...a prophetic dream that Mark was said to have experienced during his earlier, supposed ministry in the area of the Venetian lagoon. In it he was visited by an angel who told him that he would find his final resting place on the very site where San Marco would later be built." In the first century there was no settlement worth mentioning in the Lagoon yet. The prophecy was "fulfilled" in 828 when the saint's remains stolen on orders of Doge Giustiniano Participazio in Alexandria were brought to Venice. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_the_Evangelist Wikipedia entry] St. Mark is represented by a winged lion and is the patron saint of Venice [http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/saintm08.htm].

'''''but in reverse''''' 
Miles now takes the place of the angel. Who or what is the "Being" and what form does the prophecy take?

'''neither sails, masts, nor oars''' 
Not a craft that is driven by the wind or human muscle. To say more could spoil a plot point.

==Page 251==

[[Image:stmarklion.jpg|thumb|600px|center|The Lion of St. Mark, by Carpaccio]]

'''Lion of St. Mark by Carpaccion''' 
Vittore Carpaccio (c.1460–1525/6) was a Venetian painter. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittore_Carpaccio Wikipedia entry]

'''the vision of St. Mark, but in reverse''' 
In St. Mark's vision, an angel appeared to Mark and informed him that his remains would one day end up in his present location, which later became Venice. Here, Miles seems to assume the form of the angel (in the form of a lion?) and the 'promise' Pynchon mentions seems to be the angel's promise to Mark.

'''our own duty, our own fate... the real journey''' 
Pynchon's one-paragraph summation of human life and its meaning recalls a letter Pynchon wrote in the early 1960s, [[The_World_is_at_Fault|The World is at Fault]], in which he also summed up the entirety of human life in a few tidy sentences. Both employ the word 'pilgrimage.'

==Page 252==

'''''sotopòrteghi''''' 
Tunnels or passageways under large buildings.

'''tenebrous''' 
Means "shadowy" but is also a link back to the previous paragraph. The Tenebrae Service is a special form that is meant to recreate the feelings of the Passion story, also represented by the Stations of the Cross.

'''Renata''' 
Note that Renata is the name of the female protagonist in Ernest Hemingway's ''Across the River and into the Trees'', set in Venice.

'''Glagolitic''' 
The Glagolitic Alphabet is the oldest known Slavic alphabet (9th c.). It originated as a tactic to lessen the dependence of the subjects of the Prince of Greater Moravia on Frankish priests, who banned it but could not suppress it; it played a similar role in preserving Bulgarian independence from Byzantium. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic] It appears to be a nexus of the kind of simultaneous temporal and spiritual tasks the Chums of Chance are now involved in. In this, it raises the issues first explored by Pynchon in the "Tchitcherine in Kyrghizia" sections of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in which the introduction of a written alphabet causes immense political and social change.

'''Gauloise''' 
famous French cigarette. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauloise Wikipedia].

'''''scusi''''' 
Italian: Excuse me.

'''''Affascinante, caro''''' 
Italian: Fascinating, dear (addressed to a male person).

'''''ragazzo''''' 
Italian: Boy.

'''''Mattoidi''''' 
Italian: Semi-insane persons. The word was [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-mat1.htm coined by Cesare Lombroso,] the physiognomist.

'''''Prego''''' 
Italian: Please.

==Page 253==

'''Pozzuoli''' 
A city in the Province of Naples (''Napoli'') in the region of Campania. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzuoli Wikipedia].

'''The Tarocchi are much, much older.''' 
Not at all! This is one of those ideas that rarely gets questioned, especially since some "interpreters" of the tarot claim ancient Egyptian origins. The actually only [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot date back to the 15th century], as playing cards, and tarot divination was invented in the 19th century, with absolutely no historical precedent.

However, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley Aleister Crowley] in his writings and the design of his own version of the tarot, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Thoth_(Crowley) Thoth Deck], made a case for the Tarot unifying and being rooted in much older divination methods from Ancient egypt to the[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] to Greek [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology astrology]. Crowley's Golden Dawn gets a previous mention in ATD. Though work on the Thoth deck would not begin until 1938, Crowley´s assignment of the Kabbalah's [http://jktarot.com/naples Sephiroth to the major arcana] probably bears attention when considering the chapter structure of ATD: he called the correspondence "The Naples Arrangement" in honour of having worked it out there, and this passage's mention of Renata's business associate being in Naples at this moment is unlikely to be coincidence.
:Surely a robust skepticism toward Crowley and his research methods is in order? Consider, for example, this [http://www.tarothermit.com/letter.htm "open letter"] to tarot users—from a judicious scholar and believer, not a committed skeptic—making the point that if the cards embody images (of whatever origin) "speaking" to the reader or student, it isn't essential to press the further claim that they were invented by the god Thoth. The paintings lack a couple of millennia of "temporal bandwidth" but aren't necessarily voided of appeal by that, any more than Michelangelo's ''Pietà'' is a less-valid devotional object for having been sculpted 1500 years after the event.

'''''sfumato''''' 
Refers to a well known painting method which blends so subtly the colors and tones that no perceptible transition is visible, as demonstrated by Leonardo da Vince's ''Mona Lisa''. See [http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato Wikipedia]. 
The context seems to imply ''smoke'', then ''fumo'' instead should be used.
:No, the evocation of the painterly effect becomes a metaphor for the way the boat comes into sight.

==Page 254==

'''''Pax tibi, Darbe''''' 
Latin: Peace to you, Darby. ''Pax tibi'' is not at all obscure—devout Catholics used it as a parting formula—but Chick has Latinized Darby's name to ''Darbus'' (vocative case ''Darbe'') and may be consciously echoing the text in [[#Page_251|Carpaccio's lion painting]] or on a [[#Page_247|pre-Napoleonic]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Most_Serene_Republic_of_Venice.svg flag of the Most Serene Republic of Venice:] ''Pax tibi Marce evangelista meus,'' "Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist."

'''like some damned ''Farewell'' Symphony''' 
Franz Josef Haydn, 1772, Hungary. Musicians at Count Esterházy's court had been kept too long on duty (and away from their families). Going on strike would have been disrespectful, so in the last movement of Haydn's hinting work, the players one by one extinguish their candles and exit, leaving two violins to play the last phrases.

'''"Chums of Chance were expected to die on the job. Or else live forever, there being two schools of thought, actually."''' 
Possibly a reference to the fact that the Chums seem to live simultaneously in the "real" world of the novel and also in fictional stories within the novel.

==Page 255==

'''Mostruccio''' 
Italian, literally: small monster, meant as a lovely nickname.

[[Image:samoyeds.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Samoyeds]]
'''Samoyeds''' 
These nomadic reindeer herders help with the herding, pull sleds, and are sometimes called "the smiley dog" in reference to their seemingly smiling faces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoyed_(dog) Wikipedia]

'''Bastille Day''' 
The Campanile di San Marco collapsed 14 July 1902. Pynchon Wiki on the [[Campanile]].

'''''lasagnoni''''' 
Italian, plural of ''lasagnone'': Blowhard, braggart.

A hint may come from an Italian dictionary: a ''lasagnone'' being an awkward, simple person, the kind of loafers who abound on city squares or street corners and, consequently, may appear in tourists' pictures.

==Page 256==
[[Image:Campanile.jpg|thumb|200px|right]]

'''dual citizenship''' 
They live in two places, there are two skycraft, they point a gun at one place but the shell strikes a different place. Lots of '''bi-''' somethings in this passage.

'''the little-understood enigmata of the simultaneous''' 
The concept of simultaneous events, including the accurate definition and, moreover, the very ''need'' of such a definition, played a significant role in the soon-to-be formulated [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity Special Relativity Theory]. One of the main consequences of the theory is the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity relativity of simultaneity].

'''four-brick groupings''' 
Padzhitnoff sees the Campanile come apart as a game of Tetris! The "four-brick groupings [...] begin their gentle, undeadly descent, rotating and translating in all available modes". (See [[ATD_119-148#Page_123|page 123]] for more on Tetris.)

'''the tower collapses''' 
Might have some relation to the final poem of ''Gravity's Rainbow''. The fall of the tower is foreshadowed -- foretold, actually -- in Chick´s Tarot reading by Renata (See [[ATD_243-272#Page_253|page 253]]).

==Page 257==

'''What stood for a thousand years''' 
Pretty close: Construction of the Campanile began in the year 912.

'''deciduous''' 
Something that falls, drops or is shed, like leaves from a tree or baby teeth.

'''We had the weather-gauge''' 
In the days of sail, [http://www.weathergage.com/ weather gage] described the relative position of two ships or forces. If you were downwind you could run or, if you meant to engage the enemy, tack to approach him. Every time you changed tack you lost an opportunity to shoot (because your guns pointed left and right). If you lay upwind, you could keep your guns trained on the enemy throughout the engagement. The weather gage was an often decisive battle advantage, and the phrase is common in nautical narratives.

'''neuræsthenic prostration''' 
This is the third (at least) time Randolph has exhibited this tendency.

:This is the third time that this word has appeared so far, but in the second instance (page 188) it was used by Nigel to describe Lew Basnight, not Randolph.

:Not the word, but this reaction in Randolph occurred on pages 12 and 28. It seems to be a regular thing with him.

==Page 258==

'''Tetralith''' 
Modern math term for three dimensional solid formed by merging three hyperbolic paraboloids in a manner that they have a common midpoint. See [http://www.tetranometry.com/#tetralith Tetralith Photo #2]. Pynchon just means a Tetris-shaped projectile, a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetromino Tetromino].
:A "monolith" (as in ''2001: A Space Odyssey'')means an "object made of a single block of stone". Hence "tetralith" means an "object made of four blocks of stone", which is exactly what you see on the game "Tetris".

'''Japanese character for "four" being same as that for "death"''' 
Not quite correct. The Japanese kanji (Chinese) characters for four 四 and death 死 are quite distinct, but can be pronounced in the same way, hence the taboo.

'''Ryohei Uchida''' 
Ultra-nationalist, founder of the Black Dragon Soceity (see below), a right-wing, paramilitary organization. See [http://members.tripod.com/ravenshrine/uchida.html Ryohei Uchida].

'''''polny pizdets''''' 
Crude Russian: a total screwup.

'''Black Dragon Society''' 
A paramiltary, ultra-nationalist, right-wing organization in Japan founded by Ryohei Uchida in 1901. Its initial public goal was to support Janpanese expansion in Manchuria. Therefore, during the period from 1901 to the end of World War I, it aimed to help the Japanese government drive the Russian presence out of that region. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 (a war fought over Manchuria, with the Russians soundly defeated) it was active in espionage, sabotage and assassination against the Russians. During the 20's, 30's and later periods the Black Dragon Society evolved and expanded its activities around the world, including the United States. It was finally disbanded in 1946 by General MacArthur after World War II. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuryu-kai Wikipedia entry].

'''''Smirno''''' 
Russian: quiet!

==Page 259==

'''''dov'era, com'era''''' 
Italian: where it was, as it was. See [http://veniceblog.typepad.com/veniceblog/2003/12/comera_dovera.html veniceblog]. On July 14, 1902 the St. Mark's Campanile in Piazza San Marco, Venice, mysteriously and totally collapsed. Under the 'battle cry' of '''''com'era, dov'era''''' it was rebuilt. The Campanile was reopened on April 25 (St. Mark's Day) 1912. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark's_Campanile St. Mark's Campanile]. Also, Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 256|page 256:the tower collapses]].

''''La Marangona''''' 
The largest bell in the campanile is called la Marangona. At midnight, that massive bell resounds alone from high in the Piazza, and can be heard from almost any point in the city. There are four other bells in the campanile and they each have a name.

'''"Bells are the most ancient objects. They call to us out of eternity"''' 
This chapter is bookended by references to bells. It opens, "Across the city noontide a field of bells emerged into flower."

==Page 260==

'''Deuce and Sloat return''' 
These two, it will be recalled, are the men hired by the mine owners to kill Webb Traverse. (193) It is unclear who is whose sidekick. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_195|195]]) Sloat tends to bodies, Deuce the spirit. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_197|197]])

'''Curly Dee''' 
Mathematicians call the "partial derivative" symbol "curly d." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_derivative Wikipedia shows the symbol.]

'''inside out''' 
Optical illusion.

==Page 261==

'''Nonpareil Eating House''' 
The motto over the door was probably "None Like It!"

'''Mayva and Lake''' 
Webb Traverse's wife and daughter.

'''lard smoke''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke," and p. 216, "Just greasy ashes by the trailside."

'''biscuit-shooter''' 
I.e., a cook.

'''Cañon City''' 
Site of the Colorado State Penitentiary, meant to suggest Deuce and Sloat had done time there.

'''gong''' 
???
17:18, 1 January 2007 (PST)[[User:Bklyn48|Bklyn48]]
 "kicking the gong around" is slang for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnie_the_Moocher smoking opium]. Here, Sloat seems to mean that Deuce's opium smoking has affected his judgement.

==Page 262==

'''Willis Turnstone''' 
Turnstones are members of the sandpiper family, stocky birds that use their stout bills to flip over rocks and such in search of food. There are two species: Black Turnstone (''Arenaria melanocephala'') and Ruddy Turnstone (''A. interpres''). The [http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Ruddy_Turnstone.html Ruddy's] breeding plumage is a bold calico of white, orange, and black.

==Page 263==

'''"Crazier."''' 
Cf Bonnie and Clyde.

'''Oleander Prudge''' 
A name that brings joy to the heart of any Dickensian who happens to be reading along.

==Page 264==

'''single-jacker''' 
A miner who with a hammer and spike cuts a hole into rock for placement of a stick of dynamite. A set of holes are cut for each "synchronized" blast.
(Double jackers work as a team.)
Infer (this) one as a loner, a bit crazy, single minded, silent, easily hurt or misunderstood, doesn't play well with others...

'''How I feel about Mr. Kindred...and...Webb Traverse are two different things''' 

This is an interesting exchange between Lake and Oleander Prudge. Clearly Oleander hits a nerve as Lake spills the hotcakes. Lake goes into denial, saying her love of someone she would normally hate (Deuce -- her father's killer) and hating someone she would normally love (her father Webb) are "two different things."

Oleanders rejoinder, "they can't be," has the finality of a mathematical proof.

It's as if Lake is looking at passion through an emotional lense of iceland spar and sees two sets of images (father/lover, hate/love)and wants to believe they're different, whereas Oleander sees that in fact they are one. This won't be the last time Lake gets herself a "twofer."

==Page 265==

'''backing away down the valley''' 
It's instructive to look at a [http://www.vacationtelluride.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=standard&categoryId=11&subCategoryId=0 map or satellite photo of Telluride.] You could very well lay a single track from the mouth of the valley up to the town, but no farther. So the train drives into the station, then backs out until there's room for a spur where it can turn around.

'''gullet of days''' 
Metaphor. The miners' lives "as easily (as jug whisky)disappeared down the throat of everyday life".

==Page 266==

'''white-throated swift''' 
A swift is a small plainly colored bird similar to a swallow. The [http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/187/_/White-throated_Swift.aspx white-throated species,] which breeds in the western U.S. and winters in Mexico, is less plain than some. And get the species name: '''''Aeronaut'''es saxatalis.''

'''November''' 
November 1903.

'''in January, martial law''' 
January 3, 1904.

'''nymph du pave''' 
should probably read "nymphE du pave": [http://dict.die.net/nymphe%20du%20pave/ street-whore]. Theoretically this could also translate as: (image of a) nymph on a mosaic (tesselated floor) - like the huge roman one of Ariadne in the Rue du Pavé in Avenche (Switzerland) [http://www.stub.unibe.ch/welten/texte/herzig.html german weblink]

Most likely not (the mosaic idea); this is a consecrated term for prostitute. Note: in French, pavé means cobblestone. --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:09, 3 March 2007 (PST)

'''geometric episode''' 
Vaguely reminiscent of Proust on Combray: "And on one of the longest walks we ever took from Combray there was a spot where the narrow road emerged suddenly on to an immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple, but so sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a landscape, to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this single indication of human existence." [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8swnn10.txt etext]

'''Engelmann spruce''' 
[http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=175 Picea engelmannii,] a light-colored, easily worked wood with fairly straight grain and slight contrast between heartwood and sapwood; [http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/boise/trees/engelmann.shtml uses include] piano sounding boards and the tops of violins and guitars, hence the association with the acoustics of the church.

A short biography of Dr. Engelmann (lit. Angel-Man) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Engelmann Wikipedia-Entry], more elaborated on [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Engelmann german site]

'''albatross cloth''' 
Evidently a distinct color/design for a wedding or wedding party dress in the West at the time. I have no OED at the moment, but there are at least two online "diaries" or descriptions using the phrase. Here is one: "We were married August 6, 1896 at 7:30 AM at my folk’s residence among friends and relatives. To honor the event, my folks had our parlor decorated with many flowers including roses, myrtle and geraniums. I wore an elegant gown of white silk and albatross cloth."

==Page 267==

'''Osterbybruk''' 
Town noted for ironmaking, 20 miles (32 km) north of Uppsala, eastern Sweden, nowhere near Jämtland (next entry).

'''Jemt-land''' 
A Province in west central Sweden [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland Wikipedia.] The hyphen is not part of the name and probably marks a syncopation in the rev's delivery.

'''Child of the storm''' 
See the [http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/?s=child+of+the+storm ATD Weblog entry].

==Page 268==

'''sideways pussy''' 
Folklore.

'''side hobbles''' 
A hobble is a device for a horse or a dog that restricts the range of motion of the legs. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobble Wikipedia entry]. 
A [http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/archive/index.php/t-67850.html side hobble or Scotch hobble] links the horse's two left or two right legs, restricting its movement. 
"Hobble" also describes a type of skirt used (apparently) in bondage, see this [http://www.darksidecreations.com/product.asp?productid=19 example (not safe for work)] in latex.

==Page 269==

'''items, nearly always stolen''' 
Cf bower-bird.

'''marmot''' 
A stout-bodied, short-legged rodent that has coarse fur, a short bushy tail, and very short ears, lives in burrows, and hibernates in winter; also: a prairie dog or one of the larger ground squirrels. Marmots are native to Colorado and live at the higher altitudes. They are about the size of a weasel.

'''''"huevón"''''' 
From hueva (egg). According to [http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2004/06/huevon_and_guey.html this blog] huevon "literally refers to the size of a mans "cojones" (another pseudo decent word that has seen a lot of mainstream play). It is commonly used to indicate how lazy someone is. The bigger the "huevon" you are, the lazier. As with "guey", however, this too has often been used to say dude or buddy."

'''''pinche cabron''''' 
fucking asshole.

==Page 270==

'''same hour, just before dawn...he even bombs by the moon''' 
I.e., he waits for a favorable phase. People who "plant by the signs," for example, associate days of the lunar month to parts of the plant and of the human body. They sow squash (vines) under one sign and lettuce (leaves) under another; they sow nothing at all when the moon is waning. Would a moon-guided bomber blow up trestles (legs) at one phase and plutocrats (belly) at another?

Here we see that Webb is "deuced" again -- first by being killed by Deuce, second by having his modus [operandi] imitated.

The time signature for the modus is given in both solar terms -- "the same hour just before dawn" -- and lunar terms. Depending on the time of year, the bombings probably happen from 4am to 6am.

It would be interesting if the anarchists had esoteric moon teachings as to which moon position is best for success.

Given that the authorities know the time of day and that the moon is the same in a relative way, they pretty much can predict the time of the next bombing, they just don't know exactly where. Sort of a variation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Since TRP is conversant with astrology and the moon seems to be signaling ideas in AtD, it may be of interest to drill down into this passage a bit more from an astronomical, astrological perspective.

In the Northern Hemisphere, in the hours just before dawn, any visible moon will be a waning moon along the full to new moon spectrum. Vedic astrology calls this the Krishna Paksha or dark half of the full lunar cycle. A waning moon 72 degrees (approx) past full (a waning moon less than 108 degrees from the sun) takes on a negative, slightly malefic tone. If you had a clock where the sun was the hour hand stuck at noon, and the minute hand was the moon, the moon turns bad at 18 minutes to the hour and reaches it nadir in badness at the hour or new moon. 

Drilling down further, Indian astrological analysis considers the tithi. A tithi does not consider the stellar zodiacal place of the moon, but the angular distance between sun and moon -- in the clock metaphor, we look at the minute. Instead of the 8 phases of standard western classificaton, there are 30 tithis, each lasting a little less than a day. Each tithi has its own interpretation. 

If there were an esoteric aspect to anarchist bombing technique regarding an auspicious time for maximum destruction, it would perhaps be in the Mars-ruled 11th tithi (Ekadasi), a time of strong, energetic conflict, fighting, explosions. Such a moon can be seen the morning of Oct 6th, 2007. At 42 to 54 degress before new moon, it's analogous to the sun at noon and the moon at 7-9 minutes to the hour. It's your basic waning crescent moon. Further, this moon can be in the 12th house (loss and secret enemies) when the sun is predawn, but only for about 2.5 hours.
In Telluride, CO, on Oct 6th, 2007, this type of moon will be in the 12th house from about 3:14am to 5:42am with sunrise at 7:15am. So one could expect an explosion probably between first predawn light and 5:42am.

==Page 271==

'''"...sufficient unto the day and so forth"''' 
Deuce is reiterating Webb's own words from Matthew 6:34 [[ATD_81-96#Page 96]]"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

'''skip''' 
In mining, a skip is "an iron bucket, which slides between guides,
for hoisting mineral and rock." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) 

'''ex-Danite''' 
Danites were Joseph Smith's vigilantes, "Armies of Israel", during the Mormon War 1838 in Missouri, i.e., before travel to Utah.

'''"Avenging Angels"''' 
Refers to [http://www.ugca.org/ugca1099/ugca1099main.htm Civil War-vintage Colt pistols] usually with sawn off barrels.

==Page 272==

'''the Dolores''' 
Dolores River runs through Cortez (where Deuce seems to be, next to exploding cactus p270). "We woke up in the Dolores... [VALLEY/REGION/HOTEL]"

'''a luminous face suspended''' 

Some large convex object in the sky.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 243-272

2007-04-16T21:38:56Z

Gobbag: /* Page 247 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 243==

'''The Chums return''' 
When were the Chums last seen in AtD? As far back as page 142?

A brief reminder of who the Chums are and what we know about them so far:
:'''Randolph St. Cosmo''', commander.
:'''Lindsay Noseworth''', Master-at-Arms and second in command, hates slackers and slang.
:'''Miles Blundell''', handyman, awkward, with an "ample waist" (11), also ship's Commissary, whose cooking ranges from pure cordon bleu to inedible. (110)
:'''Darby Suckling''', the baby of the crew, served "as both factotum and mascotte". By page 141 or so, has transformed from spirited youth to bomb obsessed, (111) sneering, snide cynic. Because of hitting adolescence?
:'''Chick Counterfly''', the newest member of the crew, picked up by the Chums in the South while on the run from the KKK. At last appearance, had become Dr. Counterfly, knowledgeable Science Officer aboard the Inconvenience (141). Reliably humorous. (110). Chick's style of speech here seems intermediate between the country boy of the early chapters and the sophisticated Dr Counterfly who met the Vormance expedition. Are we also at an intermediate point on the timeline?

[[image:fumaioli.jpg|thumb|150px|Fumaioli in Venice|right]]
'''''fumaioli''''' 
Italian: ''funnels''; fumaioli are large wide-topped chimneys, common to the rooftops of Venice.

'''''certo''''' 
sure, certain.

'''''Seccatura''''' 
Italian: ''Inconvenience''

==Page 244==

'''''ragazza''''' 
Italian: ''girl''.

'''Picardy thirds''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. Miles seems just as moved by them as Lew. [[ATD_26-56#Page_50 | Cf p50]]

The gondolier is singing harmony with himself, or else Miles is imagining the accompaniment.

'''''stabilimento''''' 
Italian: establishment.

==Page 245==
'''Garibaldi''' 
Famous Italian leader, major figure in the Italian Unification. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garibaldi Wikipedia]

'''''"Ehi, sugo!"''''' 
"Hey, sauce!" Does this make sense to anyone?
It does not make any sense in Italian.

'''twentyfold''' 
5 chums times 4 suspects each.

'''''osteria''''' 
tavern.

'''San Polo''' 
The smallest district/area in Venice, and among the oldest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Polo Wikipedia]

'''''rio''''' 
narrow waterway in Venice.

'''against the night''' 
OK...

'''''calli''''' 
Venetian 'street' or 'lane'.

==Page 246==

'''''sotoporteghi''''' 
passageways. See picture for one example [http://www.dialetto-veneto.it/images/FotoComano/Comano-Cattognano.jpg].

'''''"Sa stai, O! Lungo, ehi!"''''' 
It does not mean anything in Italian or in the Venetian dialect. One possibility is mimicking the callouts of gondoliers. ''Lungo'' could be someone's nickname. 
Other possibility is a wrong lettering of: ''Xa star, oh! Lungo, ehi!'', meaning ''Ehi, Lungo, let it be and let's go!'' or something similar.

'''''cameriere''''' 
waitresses.

'''''pallonisti''''' 
ballonists.

'''''Ehi, macché, Pina! ''''' 
"Ehi, Giusep(Pina), what are you telling me?"

'''''giadrul''''' 
Again, doesn't mean anything in Italian or Venetian dialect. Seems to be a [https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0007&L=irtrad-l&D=0&T=0&P=94630 term of insult], variously described as American-Italian only (see previous link) and southern Italian (see next). One source gives one meaning as "[http://it.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070318034908AAem49X zuccone]" - this appears to mean "[http://notes.tranq.com/archives/2004/01/23/zuccone/ pumpkinhead]". I guess we're looking for something phallic, given the context.

'''"with all the spaghetti-joints in this town to choose from, are you saying those dadblame Russians have come in ''here''?"''' 
reminiscent of a similar line from the film ''Casablanca'', spoken by Humphrey Bogart: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

==Page 247==

'''tacchino in pomegranate sauce''' 
turkey in pomegranate sauce and, presumably, the "Purple Thanksgiving" to which Miles refers above.

'''''Dum vivimus, bibamus''''' 
While we live, let us drink. Paraphrase of "Dum vivimus, vivamus".

'''vini frizzanti''' 
sparkling wine.

'''SANGUIS RUBER, MENS PURA''' 
Latin: Red blood, clean mind.

'''''Serrata del Maggior Consiglio''''' 
Great Council Lockout, 1297. Link to the "Maggior Consiglio" entry on Reference.com [http://www.reference.com/browse/all/Maggior%20Consiglio]

'''Napoleon's abolition''' 
1797. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia]

'''Polos' return''' 
Marco Polo together with his father and uncle returned to Venice in 1295 from their travel to China started in 1271. 

''Marco Polo'' (1254-1324), a Venetian traveller. Was born of a nobel family at Venice, while his father and uncle had gone on a mercantile expedition by Constantinople and the Crimea to Bokhara and to Cathy (China). The Mongol prince commissioned them as envoys to the Pope, a commission they tried in vain to carry out in Italy (1269). The Polos started again a new trip to China in 1271, taking with them young Marco,
and arrived at the court of Kublai Khan in 1275 by way of Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan to Lop Nor, then across the Gobi desert to Kansu and Shang-tu. Marco Polo entered the diplomatic service of Kublai Khan and was sent on missions to various parts of the Mongol empire. The Polos left China on 1282 and returned by way of Sumatra, India, and Persia to Venice (1295). In 1298 Marco was in command of a galley at the battle of Curzola, where the Venetians were defeated by the Genoese, and he was a prisoner for a year at Genoa. Here it was thought that he dictated to another captive an account of his travels, published under the title of ''Divisamemt dou monde''. (English title: ''The Travels of Marco Polo''.) ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo Marco Polo].)

''Kublai Khan'' (1214-94), Mongol khan, emperor of China, grandson of Jenghiz Khan. He completed the conquest of northern China and became the first foreigner ever to rule China. An enegetic prince, he suppressed his rivals, adopted the Chinese mode of civilisation, encouraged men of letters and made Buddhism the state religion. But his attempt to invade Japan ended in disaster. His dominions extended from Arctic Ocean to the Strait of Malacca, and from Korea to Asia Minor and the confines of Hungary. The splendor of his court inspired the graphic pages of Marco Polo. (from Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 1984 edition.)

==Page 248==

[[image:doge.jpg|thumb|100px|Doge by Giovanni Bellini|right]]'''Doge's hat''' 
For some thousand years, the chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice was styled the Doge, a rare but not unique Italian title derived from the Latin Dux, as the major Italian parallel Duce and the English Duke. Doges of Venice were elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia entry]

'''''Attenzione al culo''''' 
Literally: "watch your ass."

'''Shambhala''' 
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is a mystical kingdom hidden somewhere beyond the snowpeaks of the Himalayas. Shambhala is believed to be a society where all the inhabitants are enlightened. During the 19th century, Theosophical Society founder H.P. Blavatsky alluded to the Shambhala myth, giving it currency for Western occult enthusiasts. Later esoteric writers further emphasized and elaborated on the concept of a hidden land inhabited by a hidden mystic brotherhood whose members labor for the good of humanity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambhala Wikipedia entry]

'''Professor Svegli of the University of Pisa''' 
The fictional professor's name comes from the Italian ''sveglio'' for "clever, dextrous, skillful."

'''"try to forget the usual picture in two dimensions"''' 
Cf. page 220, the idea behind the ''Tetractys'' as explained by Nigel and Neville.

'''an episode of intentional blindness''' 
Echoes the "denial of ordinary vision" that Lew sees when he meets Professor Renfrew (p. 240). Might these "blind spots" in sense evoke Iceland Spar?

==Page 249==

'''"Those whose enduring object is power in this world are only too happy to use without remorse the others, whose aim is of course to transcend all question of power. Each regards the other as a pack of deluded fools."''' 
Over time, Pynchon appears to have come to a belief in a massive conflict between cultures "valuing analysis and differentiation" and those valuing "unity and integration". The two alternate maps of Asia could be a reference to these disparate worldviews.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. Wikipedia entry on V.]

'''The problem lies with the projection''' 
(a) Projection by each group of its own obsession onto the other group. (b) Cartographic projection, i.e., how the round world gets imaged onto a flat sheet of paper.

'''paramorphoscope''' 
AtD is itself a paramorphoscope; satire and science fiction typically hold up a distorting mirror to the world in which they are written, and present worlds "set to the side of the one we have taken". In the end the correct paramorphic "mirror" shows the world clearly.

'''"a certain percentage of them went mad and ended up in the asylum on San Servolo"''' 
Cf. the Northern Ohio Insane Asylum with its light-obsessed inmates at [[ATD_57-80#Page_59|page 59]].

'''the asylum on San Servolo''' 
First established as a military hospital in 1715, later became a mental asylum. Seems that San Servolo is to Venice what Bedlam is to London. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo Wikipedia]

'''Clifford's term''' 
W.K. Clifford, (1845-1879): an English mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford Wikipedia]

==Page 250==

[[Image:stmarks.jpg|thumb|200px|right|St Mark's Basilica (Basilica di San Marco) in Venice]]
'''Dr. Cantor''' 
Georg Cantor (1845 - 1918), German mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_theorem Cantor's Theorem] is what is most relevant to his mention here.

'''the plano-convex designs of Griendl von Ach''' 
For a brief history of the compound-lens microscope, and the roles played by the Italians and the Dutch, including Griendl von Ach, see:
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Microscope

'''prophetic vision of St. Mark''' 
Mark the Evangelist (1st century) is traditionally believed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark and a companion of Peter. From [http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brown-venice.html this site]: "...a prophetic dream that Mark was said to have experienced during his earlier, supposed ministry in the area of the Venetian lagoon. In it he was visited by an angel who told him that he would find his final resting place on the very site where San Marco would later be built." In the first century there was no settlement worth mentioning in the Lagoon yet. The prophecy was "fulfilled" in 828 when the saint's remains stolen on orders of Doge Giustiniano Participazio in Alexandria were brought to Venice. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_the_Evangelist Wikipedia entry] St. Mark is represented by a winged lion and is the patron saint of Venice [http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/saintm08.htm].

'''''but in reverse''''' 
Miles now takes the place of the angel. Who or what is the "Being" and what form does the prophecy take?

'''neither sails, masts, nor oars''' 
???

==Page 251==

[[Image:stmarklion.jpg|thumb|600px|center|The Lion of St. Mark, by Carpaccio]]

'''Lion of St. Mark by Carpaccion''' 
Vittore Carpaccio (c.1460–1525/6) was a Venetian painter. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittore_Carpaccio Wikipedia entry]

'''the vision of St. Mark, but in reverse''' 
In St. Mark's vision, an angel appeared to Mark and informed him that his remains would one day end up in his present location, which later became Venice. Here, Miles seems to assume the form of the angel (in the form of a lion?) and the 'promise' Pynchon mentions seems to be the angel's promise to Mark.

'''our own duty, our own fate... the real journey''' 
Pynchon's one-paragraph summation of human life and its meaning recalls a letter Pynchon wrote in the early 1960s, [[The_World_is_at_Fault|The World is at Fault]], in which he also summed up the entirety of human life in a few tidy sentences. Both employ the word 'pilgrimage.'

==Page 252==

'''''sotopòrteghi''''' 
Tunnels or passageways under large buildings.

'''tenebrous''' 
Means "shadowy" but is also a link back to the previous paragraph. The Tenebrae Service is a special form that is meant to recreate the feelings of the Passion story, also represented by the Stations of the Cross.

'''Glagolitic''' 
The Glagolitic Alphabet is the oldest known Slavic alphabet (9th c.). It originated as a tactic to lessen the dependence of the subjects of the Prince of Greater Moravia on Frankish priests, who banned it but could not suppress it; it played a similar role in preserving Bulgarian independence from Byzantium. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic] It appears to be a nexus of the kind of simultaneous temporal and spiritual tasks the Chums of Chance are now involved in. In this, it raises the issues first explored by Pynchon in the "Tchitcherine in Kyrghizia" sections of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in which the introduction of a written alphabet causes immense political and social change.

'''Gauloise''' 
famous French cigarette. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauloise Wikipedia].

'''''scusi''''' 
excuse me.

'''''Affascinante, caro''''' 
Fascinating, dear.

'''''ragazzo''''' 
boy.

'''''Mattoidi''''' 
Borderland cases between sanity and insanity.

'''''Prego''''' 
Please.

==Page 253==

'''Pozzuoli''' 
A city in the Province of Naples (''Napoli'') in the region of Campania. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzuoli Wikipedia].

'''The Tarocchi are much, much older.''' 
Not at all! This is one of those ideas that rarely gets questioned, especially since some "interpreters" of the tarot claim ancient Egyptian origins. The actually only [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot date back to the 15th century], as playing cards, and tarot divination was invented in the 19th century, with absolutely no historical precedent.

However, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley Aleister Crowley] in his writings and the design of his own version of the tarot, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Thoth_(Crowley) Thoth Deck], made a case for the Tarot unifying and being rooted in much older divination methods from Ancient egypt to the[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] to Greek [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology astrology]. Crowley's Golden Dawn gets a previous mention in ATD. Though work on the Thoth deck would not begin until 1938, Crowley´s assignment of the Kabbalah's [http://jktarot.com/naples Sephiroth to the major arcana] probably bears attention when considering the chapter structure of ATD: he called the correspondence "The Naples Arrangement" in honour of having worked it out there, and this passage's mention of Renata's business associate being in Naples at this moment is unlikely to be coincidence.
:Surely a robust skepticism toward Crowley and his research methods is in order? Consider, for example, this [http://www.tarothermit.com/letter.htm "open letter"] to tarot users—from a judicious scholar and believer, not a committed skeptic—making the point that if the cards embody images (of whatever origin) "speaking" to the reader or student, it isn't essential to press the further claim that they were invented by the god Thoth. The paintings lack a couple of millennia of "temporal bandwidth" but aren't necessarily voided of appeal by that, any more than Michelangelo's ''Pietà'' is a less-valid devotional object for having been sculpted 1500 years after the event.

'''''sfumato''''' 
Refers to a well known painting method which blends so subtly the colors and tones that no perceptible transition is visible, as demonstrated by Leonardo da Vince's ''Mona Lisa''. See [http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato Wikipedia].
The context seems to imply ''smoke'', then '''''fumo''''' instead should be used.

==Page 254==

'''''Pax tibi''''' 
Peace to you.

'''like some damned ''Farewell'' Symphony''' 
Franz Josef Haydn, 1772, Hungary. Musicians at Count Esterházy's court had been kept too long on duty (and away from their families). Going on strike would have been disrespectful, so in the last movement of Haydn's hinting work, the players one by one extinguish their candles and exit, leaving two violins to play the last phrases.

'''"Chums of Chance were expected to die on the job. Or else live forever, there being two schools of thought, actually."''' 
Possibly a reference to the fact that the Chums seem to live simultaneously in the "real" world of the novel and also in fictional stories within the novel.

==Page 255==

'''Mostruccio''' 
Literally ''small monster'', meant as a lovely nickname

[[Image:samoyeds.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Samoyeds]]
'''Samoyeds''' 
These nomadic reindeer herders help with the herding, pull sleds, and are sometimes called "the smiley dog" in reference to their seemingly smiling faces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoyed_(dog) Wikipedia]

'''Bastille Day''' 
The Campanile di San Marco collapsed 14 July 1902. Pynchon Wiki on the [[Campanile]].

'''''lasagnoni''''' 
Lasagnone = blowhard, braggart

A hint may come from an Italian dictionary: a lasagnone being an akward, simple person, the kind of loafers who abound on city squares or street corners and which, consequently, may appear on tourists' pictures.

==Page 256==
[[Image:Campanile.jpg|thumb|200px|right]]

'''dual citizenship''' 
They live in two places, there are two skycraft, they point a gun at one place but the shell strikes a different place. Lots of '''bi-''' somethings in this passage.

'''the little-understood enigmata of the simultaneous''' 
The concept of simultaneous events, including the accurate definition and, moreover, the very ''need'' of such a definition, played a significant role in the soon-to-be formulated [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity Special Relativity Theory]. One of the main consequences of the theory is the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity relativity of simultaneity].

'''four-brick groupings''' 
Padzhitnoff sees the Campanile come apart as a game of Tetris! The "four-brick groupings [...] begin their gentle, undeadly descent, rotating and translating in all available modes". (See [[ATD_119-148#Page_123|page 123]] for more on Tetris.)

'''the tower collapses''' 
Might have some relation to the final poem of ''Gravity's Rainbow''. The fall of the tower is foreshadowed -- foretold, actually -- in Chick´s Tarot reading by Renata (See [[ATD_243-272#Page_253|page 253]]).

==Page 257==

'''What stood for a thousand years''' 
Pretty close: Construction of the Campanile began in the year 912.

'''deciduous''' 
Something that falls, drops or is shed, like leaves from a tree or baby teeth.

'''We had the weather-gauge''' 
Or, "weather-gage", meaning they had the wind at their backs pushing them in the direction they wished to follow. This is a common phrase in nautical narratives.

'''neuræsthenic prostration''' 
This is the third (at least) time Randolph has exhibited this tendency.

:This is the third time that this word has appeared so far, but in the second instance (page 188) it was used by Nigel to describe Lew Basnight, not Randolph.

:Not the word, but this reaction in Randolph occurred on pages 12 and 28. It seems to be a regular thing with him.

==Page 258==

'''Tetralith''' 
Modern math term for three dimensional solid formed by merging three hyperbolic paraboloids in a manner that they have a common midpoint. See [http://www.tetranometry.com/#tetralith Tetralith Photo #2]. Pynchon just means a Tetris-shaped projectile, a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetromino Tetromino].

'''Japanese character for "four" being same as that for "death"''' 
Not quite correct. The Japanese characters for four 四 and death 死 are quite distinct, but can be pronounced in the same way, hence the taboo.

'''Ryohei Uchida''' 
Ultra-nationalist, founder of the Black Dragon Soceity (see below), a right-wing, paramilitary organization. See [http://members.tripod.com/ravenshrine/uchida.html Ryohei Uchida].

'''''polny pizdets''''' 
sad state of affairs.

Crude Russian: a total screwup.

'''Black Dragon Society''' 
A paramiltary, ultra-nationalist, right-wing organization in Japan founded by Ryohei Uchida in 1901. Its initial public goal was to support Janpanese expansion in Manchuria. Therefore, during the period from 1901 to the end of World War I, it aimed to help the Japanese government drive the Russian presence out of that region. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 (a war fought over Manchuria, with the Russians soundly defeated) it was active in espionage, sabotage and assassination against the Russians. During the 20's, 30's and later periods the Black Dragon Society evolved and expanded its activities around the world, including the United States. It was finally disbanded in 1946 by General MacArthur after World War II. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuryu-kai Wikipedia entry].

'''''Smirno''''' 
Russian: quiet!

==Page 259==

'''''dov'era, com'era''''' 
where it was, as it was. See [http://veniceblog.typepad.com/veniceblog/2003/12/comera_dovera.html veniceblog]. On July 14, 1902 the St. Mark's Campanile in Piazza San Marco, Venice, mysteriously and totally collapsed. Under the 'battle cry' of '''''com'era, dov'era''''' it was rebuilt. The Campanile was reopened on April 25 (St. Mark's Day) 1912. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark's_Campanile St. Mark's Campanile]. Also, Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 256|page 256:the tower collapses]].

''''La Marangona''''' 
The largest bell in the campanile is called la Marangona. At midnight, that massive bell resounds alone from high in the Piazza, and can be heard from almost any point in the city. There are four other bells in the campanile and they each have a name.

'''"Bells are the most ancient objects. They call to us out of eternity"''' 
This chapter is bookended by references to bells. It opens, "Across the city noontide a field of bells emerged into flower."

==Page 260==

'''Deuce and Sloat return''' 
These two, it will be recalled, are the men hired by the mine owners to kill Webb Traverse. (193) It is unclear who is whose sidekick. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_195|195]]) Sloat tends to bodies, Deuce the spirit. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_197|197]])

'''Curly Dee''' 
Mathematicians call the "partial derivative" symbol "curly d." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_derivative Wikipedia shows the symbol.]

'''inside out''' 
Optical illusion.

==Page 261==

'''Nonpareil Eating House''' 
The motto over the door was probably "None Like It!"

'''Mayva and Lake''' 
Webb Traverse's wife and daughter.

'''lard smoke''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke," and p. 216, "Just greasy ashes by the trailside."

'''biscuit-shooter''' 
I.e., a cook.

'''Cañon City''' 
Site of the Colorado State Penitentiary, meant to suggest Deuce and Sloat had done time there.

'''gong''' 
???
17:18, 1 January 2007 (PST)[[User:Bklyn48|Bklyn48]]

==Page 262==

'''Willis Turnstone''' 
???

==Page 263==

'''"Crazier."''' 
Cf Bonnie and Clyde.

'''Oleander Prudge''' 
A name that brings joy to the heart of any Dickensian who happens to be reading along.

==Page 264==

'''single-jacker''' 
A miner who with a hammer and spike cuts a hole into rock for placement of a stick of dynamite. A set of holes are cut for each "synchronized" blast.
(Double jackers work as a team.)
Infer (this) one as a loner, a bit crazy, single minded, silent, easily hurt or misunderstood, doesn't play well with others...

==Page 265==

'''backing away down the valley''' 
It's instructive to look at a satellite photo of Telluride. You could very well lay a single track from the mouth of the valley up to the town, but no farther. So the train drives into the station, then backs out until there's room for a spur where it can turn around.

'''gullet of days''' 
???

==Page 266==

'''white-throated swift''' 
A swift is a small plainly colored bird similar to a swallow. The [http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/187/_/White-throated_Swift.aspx white-throated species,] which breeds in the western U.S. and winters in Mexico, is less plain than some. And get the species name: '''''Aeronaut'''es saxatalis.''

'''November''' 
November 1903.

'''in January, martial law''' 
January 3, 1904.

'''nymph du pave''' 
should probably read "nymphE du pave": [http://dict.die.net/nymphe%20du%20pave/ street-whore]. Theoretically this could also translate as: (image of a) nymph on a mosaic (tesselated floor) - like the huge roman one of Ariadne in the Rue du Pavé in Avenche (Switzerland) [http://www.stub.unibe.ch/welten/texte/herzig.html german weblink]

Most likely not (the mosaic idea); this is a consecrated term for prostitute. Note: in French, pavé means cobblestone. --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:09, 3 March 2007 (PST)

'''geometric episode''' 
Vaguely reminiscent of Proust on Combray: "And on one of the longest walks we ever took from Combray there was a spot where the narrow road emerged suddenly on to an immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple, but so sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a landscape, to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this single indication of human existence." [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8swnn10.txt etext]

'''Engelmann spruce''' 
[http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=175 Picea engelmannii] A short biography of Dr. Engelmann (lit. Angel-Man) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Engelmann Wikipedia-Entry], more elaborated on [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Engelmann german site]

'''albatross cloth''' 
Evidently a distinct color/design for a wedding or wedding party dress in the West at the time. I have no OED at the moment, but there are at least two online "diaries" or descriptions using the phrase. Here is one: "We were married August 6, 1896 at 7:30 AM at my folk’s residence among friends and relatives. To honor the event, my folks had our parlor decorated with many flowers including roses, myrtle and geraniums. I wore an elegant gown of white silk and albatross cloth."

==Page 267==

'''Osterbybruk''' 
Town noted for ironmaking, 20 miles (32 km) north of Uppsala, eastern Sweden, nowhere near Jämtland (next entry).

'''Jemt-land''' 
A Province in west central Sweden [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland Wikipedia.] The hyphen is not part of the name and probably marks a syncopation in the rev's delivery.

'''Child of the storm''' 
See the [http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/?s=child+of+the+storm ATD Weblog entry].

==Page 268==

'''sideways pussy''' 
Folklore.

'''side hobbles''' 
A hobble is a device for a horse or a dog that restricts the range of motion of the legs. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobble Wikipedia entry]. It is also a type of skirt used (apparently) in bondage, see this [http://www.darksidecreations.com/product.asp?productid=19 example (not safe for work)] in latex.

==Page 269==

'''items, nearly always stolen''' 
Cf bower-bird.

'''marmot''' 
A stout-bodied, short-legged rodent that has coarse fur, a short bushy tail, and very short ears, lives in burrows, and hibernates in winter; also: a prairie dog or one of the larger ground squirrels. Marmots are native to Colorado and live at the higher altitudes. They are about the size of a weasel.

'''''"huevón"''''' 
From hueva (egg). According to [http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2004/06/huevon_and_guey.html this blog] huevon "literally refers to the size of a mans "cojones" (another pseudo decent word that has seen a lot of mainstream play). It is commonly used to indicate how lazy someone is. The bigger the "huevon" you are, the lazier. As with "guey", however, this too has often been used to say dude or buddy."

'''''pinche cabron''''' 
fucking asshole.

==Page 270==

'''he even bombs by the moon''' 
I.e., he waits for a favorable phase. People who "plant by the signs," for example, associate days of the lunar month to parts of the plant and of the human body. They sow squash (vines) under one sign and lettuce (leaves) under another; they sow nothing at all when the moon is waning. Would a moon-guided bomber blow up trestles (legs) at one phase and plutocrats (belly) at another?

==Page 271==

'''skip''' 
A wagon or basket on a track in a mine, or generally any scooter.

'''ex-Danite''' 
Danites were Joseph Smith's vigilantes, "Armies of Israel", during the Mormon War 1838 in Missouri, i.e., before travel to Utah.

'''"Avenging Angels"''' 
Brigham Young's group with similar purpose as Danite above, sometimes called Danites as well. Folklore holds that these bodies of enforcers still exist.

==Page 272==

'''the Dolores''' 
Dolores River runs through Cortez (where Deuce seems to be, next to exploding cactus p270). "We woke up in the Dolores... [VALLEY/REGION/HOTEL]"

'''a luminous face suspended''' 
Some large convex object in the sky?

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 243-272

2007-04-16T21:34:37Z

Gobbag: /* Page 246 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 243==

'''The Chums return''' 
When were the Chums last seen in AtD? As far back as page 142?

A brief reminder of who the Chums are and what we know about them so far:
:'''Randolph St. Cosmo''', commander.
:'''Lindsay Noseworth''', Master-at-Arms and second in command, hates slackers and slang.
:'''Miles Blundell''', handyman, awkward, with an "ample waist" (11), also ship's Commissary, whose cooking ranges from pure cordon bleu to inedible. (110)
:'''Darby Suckling''', the baby of the crew, served "as both factotum and mascotte". By page 141 or so, has transformed from spirited youth to bomb obsessed, (111) sneering, snide cynic. Because of hitting adolescence?
:'''Chick Counterfly''', the newest member of the crew, picked up by the Chums in the South while on the run from the KKK. At last appearance, had become Dr. Counterfly, knowledgeable Science Officer aboard the Inconvenience (141). Reliably humorous. (110). Chick's style of speech here seems intermediate between the country boy of the early chapters and the sophisticated Dr Counterfly who met the Vormance expedition. Are we also at an intermediate point on the timeline?

[[image:fumaioli.jpg|thumb|150px|Fumaioli in Venice|right]]
'''''fumaioli''''' 
Italian: ''funnels''; fumaioli are large wide-topped chimneys, common to the rooftops of Venice.

'''''certo''''' 
sure, certain.

'''''Seccatura''''' 
Italian: ''Inconvenience''

==Page 244==

'''''ragazza''''' 
Italian: ''girl''.

'''Picardy thirds''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. Miles seems just as moved by them as Lew. [[ATD_26-56#Page_50 | Cf p50]]

The gondolier is singing harmony with himself, or else Miles is imagining the accompaniment.

'''''stabilimento''''' 
Italian: establishment.

==Page 245==
'''Garibaldi''' 
Famous Italian leader, major figure in the Italian Unification. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garibaldi Wikipedia]

'''''"Ehi, sugo!"''''' 
"Hey, sauce!" Does this make sense to anyone?
It does not make any sense in Italian.

'''twentyfold''' 
5 chums times 4 suspects each.

'''''osteria''''' 
tavern.

'''San Polo''' 
The smallest district/area in Venice, and among the oldest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Polo Wikipedia]

'''''rio''''' 
narrow waterway in Venice.

'''against the night''' 
OK...

'''''calli''''' 
Venetian 'street' or 'lane'.

==Page 246==

'''''sotoporteghi''''' 
passageways. See picture for one example [http://www.dialetto-veneto.it/images/FotoComano/Comano-Cattognano.jpg].

'''''"Sa stai, O! Lungo, ehi!"''''' 
It does not mean anything in Italian or in the Venetian dialect. One possibility is mimicking the callouts of gondoliers. ''Lungo'' could be someone's nickname. 
Other possibility is a wrong lettering of: ''Xa star, oh! Lungo, ehi!'', meaning ''Ehi, Lungo, let it be and let's go!'' or something similar.

'''''cameriere''''' 
waitresses.

'''''pallonisti''''' 
ballonists.

'''''Ehi, macché, Pina! ''''' 
"Ehi, Giusep(Pina), what are you telling me?"

'''''giadrul''''' 
Again, doesn't mean anything in Italian or Venetian dialect. Seems to be a [https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0007&L=irtrad-l&D=0&T=0&P=94630 term of insult], variously described as American-Italian only (see previous link) and southern Italian (see next). One source gives one meaning as "[http://it.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070318034908AAem49X zuccone]" - this appears to mean "[http://notes.tranq.com/archives/2004/01/23/zuccone/ pumpkinhead]". I guess we're looking for something phallic, given the context.

'''"with all the spaghetti-joints in this town to choose from, are you saying those dadblame Russians have come in ''here''?"''' 
reminiscent of a similar line from the film ''Casablanca'', spoken by Humphrey Bogart: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

==Page 247==

'''tacchino in pomegranate sauce''' 
turkey in pomegranate sauce and, presumably, the "Purple Thanksgiving" to which Miles refers above.

'''''Dum vivimus, bibamus''''' 
While we live, let us drink. Corruption of "Dum vivimus, vivamus".

'''vini frizzanti''' 
sparkling wine.

'''SANGUIS RUBER, MENS PURA''' 
Latin: Red blood, clean mind.

'''''Serrata del Maggior Consiglio''''' 
Great Council Lockout, 1297. Link to the "Maggior Consiglio" entry on Reference.com [http://www.reference.com/browse/all/Maggior%20Consiglio]

'''Napoleon's abolition''' 
1797. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia]

'''Polos' return''' 
Marco Polo together with his father and uncle returned to Venice in 1295 from their travel to China started in 1271. 

''Marco Polo'' (1254-1324), a Venetian traveller. Was born of a nobel family at Venice, while his father and uncle had gone on a mercantile expedition by Constantinople and the Crimea to Bokhara and to Cathy (China). The Mongol prince commissioned them as envoys to the Pope, a commission they tried in vain to carry out in Italy (1269). The Polos started again a new trip to China in 1271, taking with them young Marco,
and arrived at the court of Kublai Khan in 1275 by way of Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan to Lop Nor, then across the Gobi desert to Kansu and Shang-tu. Marco Polo entered the diplomatic service of Kublai Khan and was sent on missions to various parts of the Mongol empire. The Polos left China on 1282 and returned by way of Sumatra, India, and Persia to Venice (1295). In 1298 Marco was in command of a galley at the battle of Curzola, where the Venetians were defeated by the Genoese, and he was a prisoner for a year at Genoa. Here it was thought that he dictated to another captive an account of his travels, published under the title of ''Divisamemt dou monde''. (English title: ''The Travels of Marco Polo''.) ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo Marco Polo].)

''Kublai Khan'' (1214-94), Mongol khan, emperor of China, grandson of Jenghiz Khan. He completed the conquest of northern China and became the first foreigner ever to rule China. An enegetic prince, he suppressed his rivals, adopted the Chinese mode of civilisation, encouraged men of letters and made Buddhism the state religion. But his attempt to invade Japan ended in disaster. His dominions extended from Arctic Ocean to the Strait of Malacca, and from Korea to Asia Minor and the confines of Hungary. The splendor of his court inspired the graphic pages of Marco Polo. (from Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 1984 edition.)

==Page 248==

[[image:doge.jpg|thumb|100px|Doge by Giovanni Bellini|right]]'''Doge's hat''' 
For some thousand years, the chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice was styled the Doge, a rare but not unique Italian title derived from the Latin Dux, as the major Italian parallel Duce and the English Duke. Doges of Venice were elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia entry]

'''''Attenzione al culo''''' 
Literally: "watch your ass."

'''Shambhala''' 
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is a mystical kingdom hidden somewhere beyond the snowpeaks of the Himalayas. Shambhala is believed to be a society where all the inhabitants are enlightened. During the 19th century, Theosophical Society founder H.P. Blavatsky alluded to the Shambhala myth, giving it currency for Western occult enthusiasts. Later esoteric writers further emphasized and elaborated on the concept of a hidden land inhabited by a hidden mystic brotherhood whose members labor for the good of humanity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambhala Wikipedia entry]

'''Professor Svegli of the University of Pisa''' 
The fictional professor's name comes from the Italian ''sveglio'' for "clever, dextrous, skillful."

'''"try to forget the usual picture in two dimensions"''' 
Cf. page 220, the idea behind the ''Tetractys'' as explained by Nigel and Neville.

'''an episode of intentional blindness''' 
Echoes the "denial of ordinary vision" that Lew sees when he meets Professor Renfrew (p. 240). Might these "blind spots" in sense evoke Iceland Spar?

==Page 249==

'''"Those whose enduring object is power in this world are only too happy to use without remorse the others, whose aim is of course to transcend all question of power. Each regards the other as a pack of deluded fools."''' 
Over time, Pynchon appears to have come to a belief in a massive conflict between cultures "valuing analysis and differentiation" and those valuing "unity and integration". The two alternate maps of Asia could be a reference to these disparate worldviews.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. Wikipedia entry on V.]

'''The problem lies with the projection''' 
(a) Projection by each group of its own obsession onto the other group. (b) Cartographic projection, i.e., how the round world gets imaged onto a flat sheet of paper.

'''paramorphoscope''' 
AtD is itself a paramorphoscope; satire and science fiction typically hold up a distorting mirror to the world in which they are written, and present worlds "set to the side of the one we have taken". In the end the correct paramorphic "mirror" shows the world clearly.

'''"a certain percentage of them went mad and ended up in the asylum on San Servolo"''' 
Cf. the Northern Ohio Insane Asylum with its light-obsessed inmates at [[ATD_57-80#Page_59|page 59]].

'''the asylum on San Servolo''' 
First established as a military hospital in 1715, later became a mental asylum. Seems that San Servolo is to Venice what Bedlam is to London. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo Wikipedia]

'''Clifford's term''' 
W.K. Clifford, (1845-1879): an English mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford Wikipedia]

==Page 250==

[[Image:stmarks.jpg|thumb|200px|right|St Mark's Basilica (Basilica di San Marco) in Venice]]
'''Dr. Cantor''' 
Georg Cantor (1845 - 1918), German mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_theorem Cantor's Theorem] is what is most relevant to his mention here.

'''the plano-convex designs of Griendl von Ach''' 
For a brief history of the compound-lens microscope, and the roles played by the Italians and the Dutch, including Griendl von Ach, see:
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Microscope

'''prophetic vision of St. Mark''' 
Mark the Evangelist (1st century) is traditionally believed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark and a companion of Peter. From [http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brown-venice.html this site]: "...a prophetic dream that Mark was said to have experienced during his earlier, supposed ministry in the area of the Venetian lagoon. In it he was visited by an angel who told him that he would find his final resting place on the very site where San Marco would later be built." In the first century there was no settlement worth mentioning in the Lagoon yet. The prophecy was "fulfilled" in 828 when the saint's remains stolen on orders of Doge Giustiniano Participazio in Alexandria were brought to Venice. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_the_Evangelist Wikipedia entry] St. Mark is represented by a winged lion and is the patron saint of Venice [http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/saintm08.htm].

'''''but in reverse''''' 
Miles now takes the place of the angel. Who or what is the "Being" and what form does the prophecy take?

'''neither sails, masts, nor oars''' 
???

==Page 251==

[[Image:stmarklion.jpg|thumb|600px|center|The Lion of St. Mark, by Carpaccio]]

'''Lion of St. Mark by Carpaccion''' 
Vittore Carpaccio (c.1460–1525/6) was a Venetian painter. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittore_Carpaccio Wikipedia entry]

'''the vision of St. Mark, but in reverse''' 
In St. Mark's vision, an angel appeared to Mark and informed him that his remains would one day end up in his present location, which later became Venice. Here, Miles seems to assume the form of the angel (in the form of a lion?) and the 'promise' Pynchon mentions seems to be the angel's promise to Mark.

'''our own duty, our own fate... the real journey''' 
Pynchon's one-paragraph summation of human life and its meaning recalls a letter Pynchon wrote in the early 1960s, [[The_World_is_at_Fault|The World is at Fault]], in which he also summed up the entirety of human life in a few tidy sentences. Both employ the word 'pilgrimage.'

==Page 252==

'''''sotopòrteghi''''' 
Tunnels or passageways under large buildings.

'''tenebrous''' 
Means "shadowy" but is also a link back to the previous paragraph. The Tenebrae Service is a special form that is meant to recreate the feelings of the Passion story, also represented by the Stations of the Cross.

'''Glagolitic''' 
The Glagolitic Alphabet is the oldest known Slavic alphabet (9th c.). It originated as a tactic to lessen the dependence of the subjects of the Prince of Greater Moravia on Frankish priests, who banned it but could not suppress it; it played a similar role in preserving Bulgarian independence from Byzantium. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic] It appears to be a nexus of the kind of simultaneous temporal and spiritual tasks the Chums of Chance are now involved in. In this, it raises the issues first explored by Pynchon in the "Tchitcherine in Kyrghizia" sections of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in which the introduction of a written alphabet causes immense political and social change.

'''Gauloise''' 
famous French cigarette. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauloise Wikipedia].

'''''scusi''''' 
excuse me.

'''''Affascinante, caro''''' 
Fascinating, dear.

'''''ragazzo''''' 
boy.

'''''Mattoidi''''' 
Borderland cases between sanity and insanity.

'''''Prego''''' 
Please.

==Page 253==

'''Pozzuoli''' 
A city in the Province of Naples (''Napoli'') in the region of Campania. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzuoli Wikipedia].

'''The Tarocchi are much, much older.''' 
Not at all! This is one of those ideas that rarely gets questioned, especially since some "interpreters" of the tarot claim ancient Egyptian origins. The actually only [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot date back to the 15th century], as playing cards, and tarot divination was invented in the 19th century, with absolutely no historical precedent.

However, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley Aleister Crowley] in his writings and the design of his own version of the tarot, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Thoth_(Crowley) Thoth Deck], made a case for the Tarot unifying and being rooted in much older divination methods from Ancient egypt to the[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] to Greek [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology astrology]. Crowley's Golden Dawn gets a previous mention in ATD. Though work on the Thoth deck would not begin until 1938, Crowley´s assignment of the Kabbalah's [http://jktarot.com/naples Sephiroth to the major arcana] probably bears attention when considering the chapter structure of ATD: he called the correspondence "The Naples Arrangement" in honour of having worked it out there, and this passage's mention of Renata's business associate being in Naples at this moment is unlikely to be coincidence.
:Surely a robust skepticism toward Crowley and his research methods is in order? Consider, for example, this [http://www.tarothermit.com/letter.htm "open letter"] to tarot users—from a judicious scholar and believer, not a committed skeptic—making the point that if the cards embody images (of whatever origin) "speaking" to the reader or student, it isn't essential to press the further claim that they were invented by the god Thoth. The paintings lack a couple of millennia of "temporal bandwidth" but aren't necessarily voided of appeal by that, any more than Michelangelo's ''Pietà'' is a less-valid devotional object for having been sculpted 1500 years after the event.

'''''sfumato''''' 
Refers to a well known painting method which blends so subtly the colors and tones that no perceptible transition is visible, as demonstrated by Leonardo da Vince's ''Mona Lisa''. See [http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato Wikipedia].
The context seems to imply ''smoke'', then '''''fumo''''' instead should be used.

==Page 254==

'''''Pax tibi''''' 
Peace to you.

'''like some damned ''Farewell'' Symphony''' 
Franz Josef Haydn, 1772, Hungary. Musicians at Count Esterházy's court had been kept too long on duty (and away from their families). Going on strike would have been disrespectful, so in the last movement of Haydn's hinting work, the players one by one extinguish their candles and exit, leaving two violins to play the last phrases.

'''"Chums of Chance were expected to die on the job. Or else live forever, there being two schools of thought, actually."''' 
Possibly a reference to the fact that the Chums seem to live simultaneously in the "real" world of the novel and also in fictional stories within the novel.

==Page 255==

'''Mostruccio''' 
Literally ''small monster'', meant as a lovely nickname

[[Image:samoyeds.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Samoyeds]]
'''Samoyeds''' 
These nomadic reindeer herders help with the herding, pull sleds, and are sometimes called "the smiley dog" in reference to their seemingly smiling faces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoyed_(dog) Wikipedia]

'''Bastille Day''' 
The Campanile di San Marco collapsed 14 July 1902. Pynchon Wiki on the [[Campanile]].

'''''lasagnoni''''' 
Lasagnone = blowhard, braggart

A hint may come from an Italian dictionary: a lasagnone being an akward, simple person, the kind of loafers who abound on city squares or street corners and which, consequently, may appear on tourists' pictures.

==Page 256==
[[Image:Campanile.jpg|thumb|200px|right]]

'''dual citizenship''' 
They live in two places, there are two skycraft, they point a gun at one place but the shell strikes a different place. Lots of '''bi-''' somethings in this passage.

'''the little-understood enigmata of the simultaneous''' 
The concept of simultaneous events, including the accurate definition and, moreover, the very ''need'' of such a definition, played a significant role in the soon-to-be formulated [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity Special Relativity Theory]. One of the main consequences of the theory is the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity relativity of simultaneity].

'''four-brick groupings''' 
Padzhitnoff sees the Campanile come apart as a game of Tetris! The "four-brick groupings [...] begin their gentle, undeadly descent, rotating and translating in all available modes". (See [[ATD_119-148#Page_123|page 123]] for more on Tetris.)

'''the tower collapses''' 
Might have some relation to the final poem of ''Gravity's Rainbow''. The fall of the tower is foreshadowed -- foretold, actually -- in Chick´s Tarot reading by Renata (See [[ATD_243-272#Page_253|page 253]]).

==Page 257==

'''What stood for a thousand years''' 
Pretty close: Construction of the Campanile began in the year 912.

'''deciduous''' 
Something that falls, drops or is shed, like leaves from a tree or baby teeth.

'''We had the weather-gauge''' 
Or, "weather-gage", meaning they had the wind at their backs pushing them in the direction they wished to follow. This is a common phrase in nautical narratives.

'''neuræsthenic prostration''' 
This is the third (at least) time Randolph has exhibited this tendency.

:This is the third time that this word has appeared so far, but in the second instance (page 188) it was used by Nigel to describe Lew Basnight, not Randolph.

:Not the word, but this reaction in Randolph occurred on pages 12 and 28. It seems to be a regular thing with him.

==Page 258==

'''Tetralith''' 
Modern math term for three dimensional solid formed by merging three hyperbolic paraboloids in a manner that they have a common midpoint. See [http://www.tetranometry.com/#tetralith Tetralith Photo #2]. Pynchon just means a Tetris-shaped projectile, a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetromino Tetromino].

'''Japanese character for "four" being same as that for "death"''' 
Not quite correct. The Japanese characters for four 四 and death 死 are quite distinct, but can be pronounced in the same way, hence the taboo.

'''Ryohei Uchida''' 
Ultra-nationalist, founder of the Black Dragon Soceity (see below), a right-wing, paramilitary organization. See [http://members.tripod.com/ravenshrine/uchida.html Ryohei Uchida].

'''''polny pizdets''''' 
sad state of affairs.

Crude Russian: a total screwup.

'''Black Dragon Society''' 
A paramiltary, ultra-nationalist, right-wing organization in Japan founded by Ryohei Uchida in 1901. Its initial public goal was to support Janpanese expansion in Manchuria. Therefore, during the period from 1901 to the end of World War I, it aimed to help the Japanese government drive the Russian presence out of that region. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 (a war fought over Manchuria, with the Russians soundly defeated) it was active in espionage, sabotage and assassination against the Russians. During the 20's, 30's and later periods the Black Dragon Society evolved and expanded its activities around the world, including the United States. It was finally disbanded in 1946 by General MacArthur after World War II. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuryu-kai Wikipedia entry].

'''''Smirno''''' 
Russian: quiet!

==Page 259==

'''''dov'era, com'era''''' 
where it was, as it was. See [http://veniceblog.typepad.com/veniceblog/2003/12/comera_dovera.html veniceblog]. On July 14, 1902 the St. Mark's Campanile in Piazza San Marco, Venice, mysteriously and totally collapsed. Under the 'battle cry' of '''''com'era, dov'era''''' it was rebuilt. The Campanile was reopened on April 25 (St. Mark's Day) 1912. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark's_Campanile St. Mark's Campanile]. Also, Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 256|page 256:the tower collapses]].

''''La Marangona''''' 
The largest bell in the campanile is called la Marangona. At midnight, that massive bell resounds alone from high in the Piazza, and can be heard from almost any point in the city. There are four other bells in the campanile and they each have a name.

'''"Bells are the most ancient objects. They call to us out of eternity"''' 
This chapter is bookended by references to bells. It opens, "Across the city noontide a field of bells emerged into flower."

==Page 260==

'''Deuce and Sloat return''' 
These two, it will be recalled, are the men hired by the mine owners to kill Webb Traverse. (193) It is unclear who is whose sidekick. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_195|195]]) Sloat tends to bodies, Deuce the spirit. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_197|197]])

'''Curly Dee''' 
Mathematicians call the "partial derivative" symbol "curly d." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_derivative Wikipedia shows the symbol.]

'''inside out''' 
Optical illusion.

==Page 261==

'''Nonpareil Eating House''' 
The motto over the door was probably "None Like It!"

'''Mayva and Lake''' 
Webb Traverse's wife and daughter.

'''lard smoke''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke," and p. 216, "Just greasy ashes by the trailside."

'''biscuit-shooter''' 
I.e., a cook.

'''Cañon City''' 
Site of the Colorado State Penitentiary, meant to suggest Deuce and Sloat had done time there.

'''gong''' 
???
17:18, 1 January 2007 (PST)[[User:Bklyn48|Bklyn48]]

==Page 262==

'''Willis Turnstone''' 
???

==Page 263==

'''"Crazier."''' 
Cf Bonnie and Clyde.

'''Oleander Prudge''' 
A name that brings joy to the heart of any Dickensian who happens to be reading along.

==Page 264==

'''single-jacker''' 
A miner who with a hammer and spike cuts a hole into rock for placement of a stick of dynamite. A set of holes are cut for each "synchronized" blast.
(Double jackers work as a team.)
Infer (this) one as a loner, a bit crazy, single minded, silent, easily hurt or misunderstood, doesn't play well with others...

==Page 265==

'''backing away down the valley''' 
It's instructive to look at a satellite photo of Telluride. You could very well lay a single track from the mouth of the valley up to the town, but no farther. So the train drives into the station, then backs out until there's room for a spur where it can turn around.

'''gullet of days''' 
???

==Page 266==

'''white-throated swift''' 
A swift is a small plainly colored bird similar to a swallow. The [http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/187/_/White-throated_Swift.aspx white-throated species,] which breeds in the western U.S. and winters in Mexico, is less plain than some. And get the species name: '''''Aeronaut'''es saxatalis.''

'''November''' 
November 1903.

'''in January, martial law''' 
January 3, 1904.

'''nymph du pave''' 
should probably read "nymphE du pave": [http://dict.die.net/nymphe%20du%20pave/ street-whore]. Theoretically this could also translate as: (image of a) nymph on a mosaic (tesselated floor) - like the huge roman one of Ariadne in the Rue du Pavé in Avenche (Switzerland) [http://www.stub.unibe.ch/welten/texte/herzig.html german weblink]

Most likely not (the mosaic idea); this is a consecrated term for prostitute. Note: in French, pavé means cobblestone. --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:09, 3 March 2007 (PST)

'''geometric episode''' 
Vaguely reminiscent of Proust on Combray: "And on one of the longest walks we ever took from Combray there was a spot where the narrow road emerged suddenly on to an immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple, but so sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a landscape, to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this single indication of human existence." [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8swnn10.txt etext]

'''Engelmann spruce''' 
[http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=175 Picea engelmannii] A short biography of Dr. Engelmann (lit. Angel-Man) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Engelmann Wikipedia-Entry], more elaborated on [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Engelmann german site]

'''albatross cloth''' 
Evidently a distinct color/design for a wedding or wedding party dress in the West at the time. I have no OED at the moment, but there are at least two online "diaries" or descriptions using the phrase. Here is one: "We were married August 6, 1896 at 7:30 AM at my folk’s residence among friends and relatives. To honor the event, my folks had our parlor decorated with many flowers including roses, myrtle and geraniums. I wore an elegant gown of white silk and albatross cloth."

==Page 267==

'''Osterbybruk''' 
Town noted for ironmaking, 20 miles (32 km) north of Uppsala, eastern Sweden, nowhere near Jämtland (next entry).

'''Jemt-land''' 
A Province in west central Sweden [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland Wikipedia.] The hyphen is not part of the name and probably marks a syncopation in the rev's delivery.

'''Child of the storm''' 
See the [http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/?s=child+of+the+storm ATD Weblog entry].

==Page 268==

'''sideways pussy''' 
Folklore.

'''side hobbles''' 
A hobble is a device for a horse or a dog that restricts the range of motion of the legs. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobble Wikipedia entry]. It is also a type of skirt used (apparently) in bondage, see this [http://www.darksidecreations.com/product.asp?productid=19 example (not safe for work)] in latex.

==Page 269==

'''items, nearly always stolen''' 
Cf bower-bird.

'''marmot''' 
A stout-bodied, short-legged rodent that has coarse fur, a short bushy tail, and very short ears, lives in burrows, and hibernates in winter; also: a prairie dog or one of the larger ground squirrels. Marmots are native to Colorado and live at the higher altitudes. They are about the size of a weasel.

'''''"huevón"''''' 
From hueva (egg). According to [http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2004/06/huevon_and_guey.html this blog] huevon "literally refers to the size of a mans "cojones" (another pseudo decent word that has seen a lot of mainstream play). It is commonly used to indicate how lazy someone is. The bigger the "huevon" you are, the lazier. As with "guey", however, this too has often been used to say dude or buddy."

'''''pinche cabron''''' 
fucking asshole.

==Page 270==

'''he even bombs by the moon''' 
I.e., he waits for a favorable phase. People who "plant by the signs," for example, associate days of the lunar month to parts of the plant and of the human body. They sow squash (vines) under one sign and lettuce (leaves) under another; they sow nothing at all when the moon is waning. Would a moon-guided bomber blow up trestles (legs) at one phase and plutocrats (belly) at another?

==Page 271==

'''skip''' 
A wagon or basket on a track in a mine, or generally any scooter.

'''ex-Danite''' 
Danites were Joseph Smith's vigilantes, "Armies of Israel", during the Mormon War 1838 in Missouri, i.e., before travel to Utah.

'''"Avenging Angels"''' 
Brigham Young's group with similar purpose as Danite above, sometimes called Danites as well. Folklore holds that these bodies of enforcers still exist.

==Page 272==

'''the Dolores''' 
Dolores River runs through Cortez (where Deuce seems to be, next to exploding cactus p270). "We woke up in the Dolores... [VALLEY/REGION/HOTEL]"

'''a luminous face suspended''' 
Some large convex object in the sky?

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 243-272

2007-04-16T20:25:52Z

Gobbag: /* Page 243 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 243==

'''The Chums return''' 
When were the Chums last seen in AtD? As far back as page 142?

A brief reminder of who the Chums are and what we know about them so far:
:'''Randolph St. Cosmo''', commander.
:'''Lindsay Noseworth''', Master-at-Arms and second in command, hates slackers and slang.
:'''Miles Blundell''', handyman, awkward, with an "ample waist" (11), also ship's Commissary, whose cooking ranges from pure cordon bleu to inedible. (110)
:'''Darby Suckling''', the baby of the crew, served "as both factotum and mascotte". By page 141 or so, has transformed from spirited youth to bomb obsessed, (111) sneering, snide cynic. Because of hitting adolescence?
:'''Chick Counterfly''', the newest member of the crew, picked up by the Chums in the South while on the run from the KKK. At last appearance, had become Dr. Counterfly, knowledgeable Science Officer aboard the Inconvenience (141). Reliably humorous. (110). Chick's style of speech here seems intermediate between the country boy of the early chapters and the sophisticated Dr Counterfly who met the Vormance expedition. Are we also at an intermediate point on the timeline?

[[image:fumaioli.jpg|thumb|150px|Fumaioli in Venice|right]]
'''''fumaioli''''' 
Italian: ''funnels''; fumaioli are large wide-topped chimneys, common to the rooftops of Venice.

'''''certo''''' 
sure, certain.

'''''Seccatura''''' 
Italian: ''Inconvenience''

==Page 244==

'''''ragazza''''' 
Italian: ''girl''.

'''Picardy thirds''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. Miles seems just as moved by them as Lew. [[ATD_26-56#Page_50 | Cf p50]]

The gondolier is singing harmony with himself, or else Miles is imagining the accompaniment.

'''''stabilimento''''' 
Italian: establishment.

==Page 245==
'''Garibaldi''' 
Famous Italian leader, major figure in the Italian Unification. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garibaldi Wikipedia]

'''''"Ehi, sugo!"''''' 
"Hey, sauce!" Does this make sense to anyone?
It does not make any sense in Italian.

'''twentyfold''' 
5 chums times 4 suspects each.

'''''osteria''''' 
tavern.

'''San Polo''' 
The smallest district/area in Venice, and among the oldest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Polo Wikipedia]

'''''rio''''' 
narrow waterway in Venice.

'''against the night''' 
OK...

'''''calli''''' 
Venetian 'street' or 'lane'.

==Page 246==

'''''sotoporteghi''''' 
passageways. See picture for one example [http://www.dialetto-veneto.it/images/FotoComano/Comano-Cattognano.jpg].

'''''"Sa stai, O! Lungo, ehi!"''''' 
It does not mean anything in Italian or in the Venetian dialect. One possibility is mimicking the callouts of gondoliers. ''Lungo'' could be someone's nickname. 
Other possibility is a wrong lettering of: ''Xa star, oh! Lungo, ehi!'', meaning ''Ehi, Lungo, let it be and let's go!'' or something similar.

'''''cameriere''''' 
waitresses.

'''''pallonisti''''' 
ballonists.

'''''Ehi, macché, Pina! ''''' 
"Ehi, Giusep(Pina), what are you telling me?"

'''''giadrul''''' 
Again, doesn't mean anything in Italian or Venetian dialect.

'''"with all the spaghetti-joints in this town to choose from, are you saying those dadblame Russians have come in ''here''?"''' 
reminiscent of a similar line from the film ''Casablanca'', spoken by Humphrey Bogart: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

==Page 247==

'''tacchino in pomegranate sauce''' 
turkey in pomegranate sauce and, presumably, the "Purple Thanksgiving" to which Miles refers above.

'''''Dum vivimus, bibamus''''' 
While we live, let us drink. Corruption of "Dum vivimus, vivamus".

'''vini frizzanti''' 
sparkling wine.

'''SANGUIS RUBER, MENS PURA''' 
Latin: Red blood, clean mind.

'''''Serrata del Maggior Consiglio''''' 
Great Council Lockout, 1297. Link to the "Maggior Consiglio" entry on Reference.com [http://www.reference.com/browse/all/Maggior%20Consiglio]

'''Napoleon's abolition''' 
1797. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia]

'''Polos' return''' 
Marco Polo together with his father and uncle returned to Venice in 1295 from their travel to China started in 1271. 

''Marco Polo'' (1254-1324), a Venetian traveller. Was born of a nobel family at Venice, while his father and uncle had gone on a mercantile expedition by Constantinople and the Crimea to Bokhara and to Cathy (China). The Mongol prince commissioned them as envoys to the Pope, a commission they tried in vain to carry out in Italy (1269). The Polos started again a new trip to China in 1271, taking with them young Marco,
and arrived at the court of Kublai Khan in 1275 by way of Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan to Lop Nor, then across the Gobi desert to Kansu and Shang-tu. Marco Polo entered the diplomatic service of Kublai Khan and was sent on missions to various parts of the Mongol empire. The Polos left China on 1282 and returned by way of Sumatra, India, and Persia to Venice (1295). In 1298 Marco was in command of a galley at the battle of Curzola, where the Venetians were defeated by the Genoese, and he was a prisoner for a year at Genoa. Here it was thought that he dictated to another captive an account of his travels, published under the title of ''Divisamemt dou monde''. (English title: ''The Travels of Marco Polo''.) ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo Marco Polo].)

''Kublai Khan'' (1214-94), Mongol khan, emperor of China, grandson of Jenghiz Khan. He completed the conquest of northern China and became the first foreigner ever to rule China. An enegetic prince, he suppressed his rivals, adopted the Chinese mode of civilisation, encouraged men of letters and made Buddhism the state religion. But his attempt to invade Japan ended in disaster. His dominions extended from Arctic Ocean to the Strait of Malacca, and from Korea to Asia Minor and the confines of Hungary. The splendor of his court inspired the graphic pages of Marco Polo. (from Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 1984 edition.)

==Page 248==

[[image:doge.jpg|thumb|100px|Doge by Giovanni Bellini|right]]'''Doge's hat''' 
For some thousand years, the chief magistrate and leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice was styled the Doge, a rare but not unique Italian title derived from the Latin Dux, as the major Italian parallel Duce and the English Duke. Doges of Venice were elected for life by the city-state's aristocracy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_of_Venice Wikipedia entry]

'''''Attenzione al culo''''' 
Literally: "watch your ass."

'''Shambhala''' 
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is a mystical kingdom hidden somewhere beyond the snowpeaks of the Himalayas. Shambhala is believed to be a society where all the inhabitants are enlightened. During the 19th century, Theosophical Society founder H.P. Blavatsky alluded to the Shambhala myth, giving it currency for Western occult enthusiasts. Later esoteric writers further emphasized and elaborated on the concept of a hidden land inhabited by a hidden mystic brotherhood whose members labor for the good of humanity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambhala Wikipedia entry]

'''Professor Svegli of the University of Pisa''' 
The fictional professor's name comes from the Italian ''sveglio'' for "clever, dextrous, skillful."

'''"try to forget the usual picture in two dimensions"''' 
Cf. page 220, the idea behind the ''Tetractys'' as explained by Nigel and Neville.

'''an episode of intentional blindness''' 
Echoes the "denial of ordinary vision" that Lew sees when he meets Professor Renfrew (p. 240). Might these "blind spots" in sense evoke Iceland Spar?

==Page 249==

'''"Those whose enduring object is power in this world are only too happy to use without remorse the others, whose aim is of course to transcend all question of power. Each regards the other as a pack of deluded fools."''' 
Over time, Pynchon appears to have come to a belief in a massive conflict between cultures "valuing analysis and differentiation" and those valuing "unity and integration". The two alternate maps of Asia could be a reference to these disparate worldviews.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. Wikipedia entry on V.]

'''The problem lies with the projection''' 
(a) Projection by each group of its own obsession onto the other group. (b) Cartographic projection, i.e., how the round world gets imaged onto a flat sheet of paper.

'''paramorphoscope''' 
AtD is itself a paramorphoscope; satire and science fiction typically hold up a distorting mirror to the world in which they are written, and present worlds "set to the side of the one we have taken". In the end the correct paramorphic "mirror" shows the world clearly.

'''"a certain percentage of them went mad and ended up in the asylum on San Servolo"''' 
Cf. the Northern Ohio Insane Asylum with its light-obsessed inmates at [[ATD_57-80#Page_59|page 59]].

'''the asylum on San Servolo''' 
First established as a military hospital in 1715, later became a mental asylum. Seems that San Servolo is to Venice what Bedlam is to London. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Servolo Wikipedia]

'''Clifford's term''' 
W.K. Clifford, (1845-1879): an English mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford Wikipedia]

==Page 250==

[[Image:stmarks.jpg|thumb|200px|right|St Mark's Basilica (Basilica di San Marco) in Venice]]
'''Dr. Cantor''' 
Georg Cantor (1845 - 1918), German mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_theorem Cantor's Theorem] is what is most relevant to his mention here.

'''the plano-convex designs of Griendl von Ach''' 
For a brief history of the compound-lens microscope, and the roles played by the Italians and the Dutch, including Griendl von Ach, see:
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Microscope

'''prophetic vision of St. Mark''' 
Mark the Evangelist (1st century) is traditionally believed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark and a companion of Peter. From [http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brown-venice.html this site]: "...a prophetic dream that Mark was said to have experienced during his earlier, supposed ministry in the area of the Venetian lagoon. In it he was visited by an angel who told him that he would find his final resting place on the very site where San Marco would later be built." In the first century there was no settlement worth mentioning in the Lagoon yet. The prophecy was "fulfilled" in 828 when the saint's remains stolen on orders of Doge Giustiniano Participazio in Alexandria were brought to Venice. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_the_Evangelist Wikipedia entry] St. Mark is represented by a winged lion and is the patron saint of Venice [http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/saintm08.htm].

'''''but in reverse''''' 
Miles now takes the place of the angel. Who or what is the "Being" and what form does the prophecy take?

'''neither sails, masts, nor oars''' 
???

==Page 251==

[[Image:stmarklion.jpg|thumb|600px|center|The Lion of St. Mark, by Carpaccio]]

'''Lion of St. Mark by Carpaccion''' 
Vittore Carpaccio (c.1460–1525/6) was a Venetian painter. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittore_Carpaccio Wikipedia entry]

'''the vision of St. Mark, but in reverse''' 
In St. Mark's vision, an angel appeared to Mark and informed him that his remains would one day end up in his present location, which later became Venice. Here, Miles seems to assume the form of the angel (in the form of a lion?) and the 'promise' Pynchon mentions seems to be the angel's promise to Mark.

'''our own duty, our own fate... the real journey''' 
Pynchon's one-paragraph summation of human life and its meaning recalls a letter Pynchon wrote in the early 1960s, [[The_World_is_at_Fault|The World is at Fault]], in which he also summed up the entirety of human life in a few tidy sentences. Both employ the word 'pilgrimage.'

==Page 252==

'''''sotopòrteghi''''' 
Tunnels or passageways under large buildings.

'''tenebrous''' 
Means "shadowy" but is also a link back to the previous paragraph. The Tenebrae Service is a special form that is meant to recreate the feelings of the Passion story, also represented by the Stations of the Cross.

'''Glagolitic''' 
The Glagolitic Alphabet is the oldest known Slavic alphabet (9th c.). It originated as a tactic to lessen the dependence of the subjects of the Prince of Greater Moravia on Frankish priests, who banned it but could not suppress it; it played a similar role in preserving Bulgarian independence from Byzantium. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic] It appears to be a nexus of the kind of simultaneous temporal and spiritual tasks the Chums of Chance are now involved in. In this, it raises the issues first explored by Pynchon in the "Tchitcherine in Kyrghizia" sections of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in which the introduction of a written alphabet causes immense political and social change.

'''Gauloise''' 
famous French cigarette. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauloise Wikipedia].

'''''scusi''''' 
excuse me.

'''''Affascinante, caro''''' 
Fascinating, dear.

'''''ragazzo''''' 
boy.

'''''Mattoidi''''' 
Borderland cases between sanity and insanity.

'''''Prego''''' 
Please.

==Page 253==

'''Pozzuoli''' 
A city in the Province of Naples (''Napoli'') in the region of Campania. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzuoli Wikipedia].

'''The Tarocchi are much, much older.''' 
Not at all! This is one of those ideas that rarely gets questioned, especially since some "interpreters" of the tarot claim ancient Egyptian origins. The actually only [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot date back to the 15th century], as playing cards, and tarot divination was invented in the 19th century, with absolutely no historical precedent.

However, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley Aleister Crowley] in his writings and the design of his own version of the tarot, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Thoth_(Crowley) Thoth Deck], made a case for the Tarot unifying and being rooted in much older divination methods from Ancient egypt to the[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] to Greek [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology astrology]. Crowley's Golden Dawn gets a previous mention in ATD. Though work on the Thoth deck would not begin until 1938, Crowley´s assignment of the Kabbalah's [http://jktarot.com/naples Sephiroth to the major arcana] probably bears attention when considering the chapter structure of ATD: he called the correspondence "The Naples Arrangement" in honour of having worked it out there, and this passage's mention of Renata's business associate being in Naples at this moment is unlikely to be coincidence.
:Surely a robust skepticism toward Crowley and his research methods is in order? Consider, for example, this [http://www.tarothermit.com/letter.htm "open letter"] to tarot users—from a judicious scholar and believer, not a committed skeptic—making the point that if the cards embody images (of whatever origin) "speaking" to the reader or student, it isn't essential to press the further claim that they were invented by the god Thoth. The paintings lack a couple of millennia of "temporal bandwidth" but aren't necessarily voided of appeal by that, any more than Michelangelo's ''Pietà'' is a less-valid devotional object for having been sculpted 1500 years after the event.

'''''sfumato''''' 
Refers to a well known painting method which blends so subtly the colors and tones that no perceptible transition is visible, as demonstrated by Leonardo da Vince's ''Mona Lisa''. See [http://en/wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato Wikipedia].
The context seems to imply ''smoke'', then '''''fumo''''' instead should be used.

==Page 254==

'''''Pax tibi''''' 
Peace to you.

'''like some damned ''Farewell'' Symphony''' 
Franz Josef Haydn, 1772, Hungary. Musicians at Count Esterházy's court had been kept too long on duty (and away from their families). Going on strike would have been disrespectful, so in the last movement of Haydn's hinting work, the players one by one extinguish their candles and exit, leaving two violins to play the last phrases.

'''"Chums of Chance were expected to die on the job. Or else live forever, there being two schools of thought, actually."''' 
Possibly a reference to the fact that the Chums seem to live simultaneously in the "real" world of the novel and also in fictional stories within the novel.

==Page 255==

'''Mostruccio''' 
Literally ''small monster'', meant as a lovely nickname

[[Image:samoyeds.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Samoyeds]]
'''Samoyeds''' 
These nomadic reindeer herders help with the herding, pull sleds, and are sometimes called "the smiley dog" in reference to their seemingly smiling faces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoyed_(dog) Wikipedia]

'''Bastille Day''' 
The Campanile di San Marco collapsed 14 July 1902. Pynchon Wiki on the [[Campanile]].

'''''lasagnoni''''' 
Lasagnone = blowhard, braggart

A hint may come from an Italian dictionary: a lasagnone being an akward, simple person, the kind of loafers who abound on city squares or street corners and which, consequently, may appear on tourists' pictures.

==Page 256==
[[Image:Campanile.jpg|thumb|200px|right]]

'''dual citizenship''' 
They live in two places, there are two skycraft, they point a gun at one place but the shell strikes a different place. Lots of '''bi-''' somethings in this passage.

'''the little-understood enigmata of the simultaneous''' 
The concept of simultaneous events, including the accurate definition and, moreover, the very ''need'' of such a definition, played a significant role in the soon-to-be formulated [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity Special Relativity Theory]. One of the main consequences of the theory is the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity relativity of simultaneity].

'''four-brick groupings''' 
Padzhitnoff sees the Campanile come apart as a game of Tetris! The "four-brick groupings [...] begin their gentle, undeadly descent, rotating and translating in all available modes". (See [[ATD_119-148#Page_123|page 123]] for more on Tetris.)

'''the tower collapses''' 
Might have some relation to the final poem of ''Gravity's Rainbow''. The fall of the tower is foreshadowed -- foretold, actually -- in Chick´s Tarot reading by Renata (See [[ATD_243-272#Page_253|page 253]]).

==Page 257==

'''What stood for a thousand years''' 
Pretty close: Construction of the Campanile began in the year 912.

'''deciduous''' 
Something that falls, drops or is shed, like leaves from a tree or baby teeth.

'''We had the weather-gauge''' 
Or, "weather-gage", meaning they had the wind at their backs pushing them in the direction they wished to follow. This is a common phrase in nautical narratives.

'''neuræsthenic prostration''' 
This is the third (at least) time Randolph has exhibited this tendency.

:This is the third time that this word has appeared so far, but in the second instance (page 188) it was used by Nigel to describe Lew Basnight, not Randolph.

:Not the word, but this reaction in Randolph occurred on pages 12 and 28. It seems to be a regular thing with him.

==Page 258==

'''Tetralith''' 
Modern math term for three dimensional solid formed by merging three hyperbolic paraboloids in a manner that they have a common midpoint. See [http://www.tetranometry.com/#tetralith Tetralith Photo #2]. Pynchon just means a Tetris-shaped projectile, a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetromino Tetromino].

'''Japanese character for "four" being same as that for "death"''' 
Not quite correct. The Japanese characters for four 四 and death 死 are quite distinct, but can be pronounced in the same way, hence the taboo.

'''Ryohei Uchida''' 
Ultra-nationalist, founder of the Black Dragon Soceity (see below), a right-wing, paramilitary organization. See [http://members.tripod.com/ravenshrine/uchida.html Ryohei Uchida].

'''''polny pizdets''''' 
sad state of affairs.

Crude Russian: a total screwup.

'''Black Dragon Society''' 
A paramiltary, ultra-nationalist, right-wing organization in Japan founded by Ryohei Uchida in 1901. Its initial public goal was to support Janpanese expansion in Manchuria. Therefore, during the period from 1901 to the end of World War I, it aimed to help the Japanese government drive the Russian presence out of that region. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 (a war fought over Manchuria, with the Russians soundly defeated) it was active in espionage, sabotage and assassination against the Russians. During the 20's, 30's and later periods the Black Dragon Society evolved and expanded its activities around the world, including the United States. It was finally disbanded in 1946 by General MacArthur after World War II. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokuryu-kai Wikipedia entry].

'''''Smirno''''' 
Russian: quiet!

==Page 259==

'''''dov'era, com'era''''' 
where it was, as it was. See [http://veniceblog.typepad.com/veniceblog/2003/12/comera_dovera.html veniceblog]. On July 14, 1902 the St. Mark's Campanile in Piazza San Marco, Venice, mysteriously and totally collapsed. Under the 'battle cry' of '''''com'era, dov'era''''' it was rebuilt. The Campanile was reopened on April 25 (St. Mark's Day) 1912. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark's_Campanile St. Mark's Campanile]. Also, Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 256|page 256:the tower collapses]].

''''La Marangona''''' 
The largest bell in the campanile is called la Marangona. At midnight, that massive bell resounds alone from high in the Piazza, and can be heard from almost any point in the city. There are four other bells in the campanile and they each have a name.

'''"Bells are the most ancient objects. They call to us out of eternity"''' 
This chapter is bookended by references to bells. It opens, "Across the city noontide a field of bells emerged into flower."

==Page 260==

'''Deuce and Sloat return''' 
These two, it will be recalled, are the men hired by the mine owners to kill Webb Traverse. (193) It is unclear who is whose sidekick. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_195|195]]) Sloat tends to bodies, Deuce the spirit. ([[ATD_171-198#Page_197|197]])

'''Curly Dee''' 
Mathematicians call the "partial derivative" symbol "curly d." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_derivative Wikipedia shows the symbol.]

'''inside out''' 
Optical illusion.

==Page 261==

'''Nonpareil Eating House''' 
The motto over the door was probably "None Like It!"

'''Mayva and Lake''' 
Webb Traverse's wife and daughter.

'''lard smoke''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke," and p. 216, "Just greasy ashes by the trailside."

'''biscuit-shooter''' 
I.e., a cook.

'''Cañon City''' 
Site of the Colorado State Penitentiary, meant to suggest Deuce and Sloat had done time there.

'''gong''' 
???
17:18, 1 January 2007 (PST)[[User:Bklyn48|Bklyn48]]

==Page 262==

'''Willis Turnstone''' 
???

==Page 263==

'''"Crazier."''' 
Cf Bonnie and Clyde.

'''Oleander Prudge''' 
A name that brings joy to the heart of any Dickensian who happens to be reading along.

==Page 264==

'''single-jacker''' 
A miner who with a hammer and spike cuts a hole into rock for placement of a stick of dynamite. A set of holes are cut for each "synchronized" blast.
(Double jackers work as a team.)
Infer (this) one as a loner, a bit crazy, single minded, silent, easily hurt or misunderstood, doesn't play well with others...

==Page 265==

'''backing away down the valley''' 
It's instructive to look at a satellite photo of Telluride. You could very well lay a single track from the mouth of the valley up to the town, but no farther. So the train drives into the station, then backs out until there's room for a spur where it can turn around.

'''gullet of days''' 
???

==Page 266==

'''white-throated swift''' 
A swift is a small plainly colored bird similar to a swallow. The [http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/187/_/White-throated_Swift.aspx white-throated species,] which breeds in the western U.S. and winters in Mexico, is less plain than some. And get the species name: '''''Aeronaut'''es saxatalis.''

'''November''' 
November 1903.

'''in January, martial law''' 
January 3, 1904.

'''nymph du pave''' 
should probably read "nymphE du pave": [http://dict.die.net/nymphe%20du%20pave/ street-whore]. Theoretically this could also translate as: (image of a) nymph on a mosaic (tesselated floor) - like the huge roman one of Ariadne in the Rue du Pavé in Avenche (Switzerland) [http://www.stub.unibe.ch/welten/texte/herzig.html german weblink]

Most likely not (the mosaic idea); this is a consecrated term for prostitute. Note: in French, pavé means cobblestone. --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:09, 3 March 2007 (PST)

'''geometric episode''' 
Vaguely reminiscent of Proust on Combray: "And on one of the longest walks we ever took from Combray there was a spot where the narrow road emerged suddenly on to an immense plain, closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose and stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire's steeple, but so sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than sketched on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious to give to such a landscape, to so pure a piece of 'nature,' this little sign of art, this single indication of human existence." [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8swnn10.txt etext]

'''Engelmann spruce''' 
[http://www.cnr.vt.edu/dendro/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=175 Picea engelmannii] A short biography of Dr. Engelmann (lit. Angel-Man) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Engelmann Wikipedia-Entry], more elaborated on [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Engelmann german site]

'''albatross cloth''' 
Evidently a distinct color/design for a wedding or wedding party dress in the West at the time. I have no OED at the moment, but there are at least two online "diaries" or descriptions using the phrase. Here is one: "We were married August 6, 1896 at 7:30 AM at my folk’s residence among friends and relatives. To honor the event, my folks had our parlor decorated with many flowers including roses, myrtle and geraniums. I wore an elegant gown of white silk and albatross cloth."

==Page 267==

'''Osterbybruk''' 
Town noted for ironmaking, 20 miles (32 km) north of Uppsala, eastern Sweden, nowhere near Jämtland (next entry).

'''Jemt-land''' 
A Province in west central Sweden [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland Wikipedia.] The hyphen is not part of the name and probably marks a syncopation in the rev's delivery.

'''Child of the storm''' 
See the [http://againsttheday.wordpress.com/?s=child+of+the+storm ATD Weblog entry].

==Page 268==

'''sideways pussy''' 
Folklore.

'''side hobbles''' 
A hobble is a device for a horse or a dog that restricts the range of motion of the legs. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobble Wikipedia entry]. It is also a type of skirt used (apparently) in bondage, see this [http://www.darksidecreations.com/product.asp?productid=19 example (not safe for work)] in latex.

==Page 269==

'''items, nearly always stolen''' 
Cf bower-bird.

'''marmot''' 
A stout-bodied, short-legged rodent that has coarse fur, a short bushy tail, and very short ears, lives in burrows, and hibernates in winter; also: a prairie dog or one of the larger ground squirrels. Marmots are native to Colorado and live at the higher altitudes. They are about the size of a weasel.

'''''"huevón"''''' 
From hueva (egg). According to [http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2004/06/huevon_and_guey.html this blog] huevon "literally refers to the size of a mans "cojones" (another pseudo decent word that has seen a lot of mainstream play). It is commonly used to indicate how lazy someone is. The bigger the "huevon" you are, the lazier. As with "guey", however, this too has often been used to say dude or buddy."

'''''pinche cabron''''' 
fucking asshole.

==Page 270==

'''he even bombs by the moon''' 
I.e., he waits for a favorable phase. People who "plant by the signs," for example, associate days of the lunar month to parts of the plant and of the human body. They sow squash (vines) under one sign and lettuce (leaves) under another; they sow nothing at all when the moon is waning. Would a moon-guided bomber blow up trestles (legs) at one phase and plutocrats (belly) at another?

==Page 271==

'''skip''' 
A wagon or basket on a track in a mine, or generally any scooter.

'''ex-Danite''' 
Danites were Joseph Smith's vigilantes, "Armies of Israel", during the Mormon War 1838 in Missouri, i.e., before travel to Utah.

'''"Avenging Angels"''' 
Brigham Young's group with similar purpose as Danite above, sometimes called Danites as well. Folklore holds that these bodies of enforcers still exist.

==Page 272==

'''the Dolores''' 
Dolores River runs through Cortez (where Deuce seems to be, next to exploding cactus p270). "We woke up in the Dolores... [VALLEY/REGION/HOTEL]"

'''a luminous face suspended''' 
Some large convex object in the sky?

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 219-242

2007-04-09T15:09:42Z

Gobbag: /* Page 239 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 219==

[[image:tetractys.png|thumb|175px|right|The Tetractys]]'''True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys''' 
The Tetractys is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, and nutbars of other affiliations since. It has all kinds of symbological meaning, including the four elements, the organization of space, the Tarot, etc. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys Wikipedia entry];

:In the Pythagorean tetractys the supreme symbol of universal forces and processes are set forth the theories of the Greeks concerning color and music. The first three dots represent the threefold White Light, which is the Godhead containing potentially all sound and color. The remaining seven dots are the colors of the spectrum and the notes of the musical scale. The colors and tones are the active creative powers which, emanating from the First Cause, establish the universe. The seven are divided into two groups, one containing three powers and the other four a relationship also shown in the tetractys. The higher group that of three becomes the spiritual nature of the created universe; the lower group that of four manifests as the irrational sphere, or inferior world. <ref>From [http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/ ''The Secret Teachings of All Ages''] by Manly P. Hall (1928)</ref>

:This division (three/four) has to be related to the "trivium" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and "quadrivium" (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) of the [http://www.cosmopolis.com/villa/liberal-arts.html Medieval liberal arts.]

More effably, if you flip the Tetractys left to right, it gives the positions of the pins in ten-pin bowling.

The acronym T.W.I.T is most appropriate: a twit is an ineffectual buffoon. Neville and Nigel are certainly twits.

I believe the above really misses the Big Symbol, i.e., Pynchon's linking of T.W.I.T. with the vagina, i.e., the female ''sex'' organ. "T.W.I.T." sounds like no, ''is'' a cross between "clit" and "twat." And, natch, it's headed up by [[#Page 220|Nookshaft]]. And, let's face it, that tetractys is surely an inverted beaver, yes? (See [[ATD 171-198#Page 183|"Beavers of the Brain"]]). Its male counterpart is [[ATD 397-428#Page 405|Candlebrow U.]], to be encountered down the road apiece (and that ain't no spoiler!).

'''Chunxton Crescent''' 
Invented by Pynchon. "Crescent" is a female symbol in many mythologies and cultures, and it reinforces T.W.I.T.'s association with the female sex. But "Chunxton"?

:The moon is seen as a female symbol, and was worshipped in ancient times as a powerful force. It is believed to be linked to the unconscious and our feminine side. The sacredness of the moon has been connected with the basic cyclic rhythms of life. The changing phases of the moon were linked to the death and rebirth seen in crops and the seasons, and also to the female monthly cycle that controls human fertility. The moon calendar is still important and many festivals exist around the lunar phases. [http://www.new-age.co.uk/moon-dates.htm]

''Chunxton'' may be derived from "chunk stone" or "chunk(s) town." I'm inclined to favor the first. "Chunk stone" has two main meanings: (1) stone that's quarried in chunks instead of blocks, slabs or crystals; (2) a magical stone that figures in some American Indian stories. Turquoise and amethyst chunk stones are often made into jewelry as-is, or [http://www.bridastone.com/chunkstone.htm larger chunks of (say) marble] can be used as decoration. Here are links to two Indian stories in which people use chunk stones in finding or tracking: [http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/se/mtsi/mtsi156.htm first,] [http://romeoandjuliet.ws/books/native_american/se/mtsi/mtsi270.shtml second.] Of course it's also possible that "chunk" is the verb meaning "throw," in which case there ought to be a "glass houses" connection somewhere; I can't find it.

'''Tyburnia''' 
"Tyburnia occupies the ground on the north side of Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens, and stretches from Edgware-road on the east to about Inverness-terrace on the west. This is not, strictly speaking, a fashionable quarter; but it is not absolutely unfashionable, and is a very favourite part with those — lawyers, merchants, and others—who have to reside in town the greater part of the year." Charles Dickens (Jr.), ''Dickens's Dictionary of London'', 1879.

'''Sir John Soane''' 
(1753 – 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Soane Wikipedia entry]

'''Madame Blavatsky''' 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Russian-born founder of the Theosophical Society. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and false or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Blavatsky Wikipedia]

'''century had rushed . . . out the other side''' 
An instant of zero, not a whole year, because they aren't yet "out the other side" of 1900. ??? A century is 100 years. The one referred to here lasted from 1800-1899 and, since it's 1900, it has "rushed to its end."
:Missing the point. The image focuses on the ''zero.'' And please, let's not have that sterile argument about when a century begins!

==Page 220==

'''not even if that tartan were authentic''' 
It's a solecism in England, but is (or was) a prosecutable offense in Scotland, to wear the tartan of a clan one doesn't belong to.

'''Caen stone''' 
A cream-colored limestone for building, found near Caen, France.

'''syrinx''' 
a primitive wind instrument consisting of several parallel pipes bound together; panpipes.

'''lyre''' 
an ancient form of harp, so syrinx and lyre are like flute and harp. A famous Concerto for flute and harp is the work of G. F. Handel, who also composed the ''Messiah.''

'''ten-in-one''' 
Ten sideshow acts for one admission. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow Wikipedia]

'''Nicholas Nookshaft''' 
Grand Cohen Nicholas Nookshaft's name reinforces the linking of [[#Page 219|T.W.I.T.]] to the female sex organ, "Nooky shaft" being a vulgarism for the vagina. Interestingly, "shaft" is both a rod or pole, or penis, as well as a vertical passageway, thus its connations are bisexual.

'''Grand Cohen''' 
'Cohen' is Hebrew for 'priest'.

==Page 221==

'''Couldn't have been the same world as the one you're in now''' 
Raising the possibility that Lew got blown up in one world and shifted to another.

'''"Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really."''' 
Could this be the explanation for some of the most inexplicable scenes from the book thus far: Lew Basnight's first encounter with the Drave group (around [[ATD_26-56#Page_39|page 39]]) and Hunter Penhallow's escape from the mysterious creature (around [[ATD_149-170#Pages_154-155|page 154]])? Parallel worlds?

''''Tzaddik'''' 
A righteous Jew. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadik Wikipedia]

==Page 222==

'''The Tetractys isn't the only thing round here that's ineffable''' 
Schoolyard joke. "F" a euphemism for fuck, so "ineffable" = unfuckable also describes Yashmeen.

'''Eighteenth Hussars''' 
Prestigious British cavalry regiment. Stationed in India 1864-76 and 1890-98; Halfcourt's secondment must have taken place at one of these times.

'''Simla''' 
British outpost in Himalayas. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimla Wikipedia]

'''Smartly taken at silly point''' 
A cricketing reference. Silly point is a fielding position very close to the batsman. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=smartly.taken+silly.point examples]

'''To know, to dare, to will, to keep silent''' 
Mystical formula. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=to.know.to.dare.to.will examples]
The four precepts of Western Magick, extensively discussed in the writings of Aleister Crowley.

'''In the States, "detective" doesn't mean—''' 
. . . An agent who solves criminal cases. The major "detective" bureaus hired personnel out as bodyguards and muscle.

'''"There is but one 'case' which occupies us"''' 
This echoes the famous quote from Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'': "The world is all that is the case." (See the full text of the ''Tractatus'' [http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html here].) This quote also factors in heavily in V. (Specifically, in two places: there's the [http://www.phil-reed.com/2006/02/14/the-love-songs-of-thomas-pynchon/ P's and Q's love song], and also in Captain Weissman's repeating, encoded, hallucinated message over the telegraph in Africa.)

'''The Number 22''' 
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really. 22 is the number of cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, the section of the deck that has been removed from the modern playing deck which only has the suits (elements) and the Court cards. The 22 Major Arcana are numbers 0 to 21 and move from The Fool card to the Universe. Purportedly and symbolically, the progression of cards tell a tale of the evolutionary path of the Soul in its course. The 22 cards also, in some systems, map onto the 22 paths that connect the spheres of the Kabalistic Tree of Life (which also is mentioned in this chapter). An understanding of the Tarot cards cannot be achieved with an understanding how they relate to the Tree of Life. They are the relationships between the Sephiroths which in turn at 10 in number, just like the Tetractys and portray the energies that flow from the highest monad of Divinity (Kether) down into the manifested world (Malkuth). Pynchon makes use of both the Tarot and the Kabalah in Against the Day as well as Gravity's Rainbow.

See also the novel ''The Greater Trumps'' by Charles Williams for a similar intrusion of the characters of the Major Arcana into everyday English life.

==Page 223==

'''"And the crime... just what would be the nature of that?"''' 
Might Lew himself be one of the 22 suspects? Perhaps the ineffable crime is what made people treat him like a pariah earlier in the book.

==Page 224==

'''"'walking out'"''' 
A walking date.

'''the veil of ''maya''''' 
In Hinduism, maya is the phenomenal world of separate objects and people, which creates for some the illusion that it is the only reality. In Hindu philosophy, maya is believed to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self. Many philosophies or religions seek to "pierce the veil" in order to glimpse the transcendent truth. Arthur Schopenhauer used the term "Veil of Maya" to describe his view of ''The World as Will and Representation''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion) Wikipedia entry]

'''the ancient London landscape . . . known to the Druids''' 
Peter Ackroyd's recent ''London, the Biography'' devotes many pages to sacred and magical features of the city. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid "Druid"].

'''Trumper's''' 
London's royal barbers since 1875. [http://www.trumpers.com/ site]

'''On this island [...] all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted''' 
A sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Pynchon's December 2006 letter written in defense of novelist Ian McEwan: "Given the British genius for coded utterance..." [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/06/nwriter06.xml Image of Letter]

'''crosswords in newspapers''' 
The first crossword to appear in a newspaper was in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossword#History 1913]. Cryptic crosswords in British newspapers certainly match Pynchon's description. See, for example, [http://www.crossword.org.uk/listen.htm the Listener crossword].

==Page 225==

'''Girton College''' 
For women, founded 1869. [http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/about/history/brief.html history]

'''Next they'll be letting you folks vote.''' 
Women were granted the right to vote in England in 1928.

'''"the vast jangling thronged somehow monumental London evening"''' 
This kind of eschewing of punctuation might be expected in Joyce but it's not typical of Pynchon and seems to serve no special purpose here. A typo?

'''Pamela Colman Smith''' 
Illustrator of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith "Wikipedia"].

'''Arthur Edward Waite''' 
Occultist and co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Waite Wikipedia]

'''four stone''' 
56 pounds.

'''Uckenfays''' 
Ucken-fay is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin "pig latin"] for 'fucken'.

'''''gaver du visage''''' 
A literal translation of "stuff one's face", though this is not how it is said in French (it would be se gaver or se baffrer). [http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/g/gaver.htm cite]

'''cigar-divan''' 
A smoking salon (divan) for cigar smokers.

Interestingly, a work by Robert Louis Stevenson, from 1903, entitled The Dynamiter begins with a "Prologue of the Cigar Divan".

==Page 226==

'''Seven Dials''' 
bad area in London, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dials Wikipedia entry]

[[image:tarotdevil.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Devil by Colman-Smith]]

'''growler''' 
Four-wheeled [http://www.bbno.freeserve.co.uk/glossary.htm carriage] drawn by four horses. Supplanted by the Hansom cab.

<div id="renfrew"></div>'''Renfrew at Cambridge and Werfner at Göttingen''' 
Note that each Professor's name is the other's spelled backward.

Also notice the theme of dual natures or forces. The two professors are "bound and ... could not separate even if they wanted to." They become rivals within the broader conflict of the 'Great Game' -- the political rivalry over Central Asia being played out by the various European powers, but especially by Great Britain and the Russian Empire.

[http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambuniv/index.html Cambridge University] is one of the oldest and the best universities in the world. In 2009 it will be celebrating its 800th Anniversary. In its early day, Cambridge was a center of the new learning of the Renaissance and of the theology of the Reformation; in modern times it has excelled in science. It is now a confederation of 31 Colleges (such as King's, Girton, St.John, Trinity and others mentioned in ATD), consists of over 100 departments and faculties, and other institutions. Since 1904, 81 affiliates of Cambridge have won Nobel Prize in every category: 29 in Physics, 22 in Medicine, 19 in Chemistry, 7 in Economics, 2 in Literature and 2 in Peace.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-August_University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen Göttingen University], one of the most famous universities in Europe, founded in Göttingen, Germany, in 1737 by King George II of England in his capacity as Elector of Hanover. At the end of the 19th century, it became world famous because of its Departments of Mathematics and Physics and rivaled Cambridge for eminence. The reputation of the university was founded by many eminent professors who are commemorated by statues and plaques all over the campus. It claimed 44 Nobel Laureates. But it suffered from the 1933 Great Purge of the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish Physics" and never recovered its original fame.

'''Berlin Conference of 1878''' 
Divided Balkans after Russo-Turkish War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin Wikipedia]

'''English, . . . , Japanese—not to mention indigenous—components''' 
''Not to mention'' them was exactly the point as the Great Powers sorted out the Ottoman possessions.

==Page 227==

'''"The Great Game"''' 
The Great Game was a term used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The term was later popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, ''Kim''. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia entry] Also the name of Padzhitnoff's airship.

'''mamluk lamps''' 
A [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/07/nfe/hob_17.190.985.htm mosque lamp]
from the [http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/mamluks.php mamluk] era.

'''...the Kabbalist Tree of Life, with the names of the Sephiroth spelled out in Hebrew, which had brought her more than enough of that uniquely snot-nosed British anti-Semitism... ''' 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] is the ancient study of Jewish mysticism, long shrouded in mystery and kept from all but a devout few of the most dedicated Talmudic scholars. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tree_of_Life_Medieval.jpg.jpg Tree of Life] is one of the central symbols of Kabbalah, supposedly a physical representation of the path of enlightenment from the most base knowledge of the physical world (at the bottom), to the highest spiritual planes of understanding (at the top). The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot Sephiroth] are the nodes of the Tree, representing the various "stages" of understanding. Of course, tihs is all a very gross oversimplifcation and hardly does justice to the term itself.

The "Quabbalah" or "Cabalah" being studied by Madonna and others in Hollywood is a secularized and co-opted form of the original Kabbalah, which is deeply connected to the Torah and Jewish life.

In Medieval Europe, Kabbalist scholars wore amulets and other symbols on their clothing, and were often misunderstood to be magicians or wizards (think Merlin). The common magician's expression "abra cadabra" has Kabbalistic origins.

'''"Eskimoff . . . I say what sort of name is that?"''' 
Tiptoeing around the real question, "Is she Jewish?"

'''English Rose''' 
The phrase "English Rose" or "Bonnie English Rose" when applied to a woman means her skin is unblemished, her coloring subtle, her temper sweet. Madame Eskimoff, in short, is a beauty in a traditional English style. 
(Incidentally, an officially unrecognized designation of [http://www.marinrose.org/englishroses.html roses].)

==Page 228==

'''Oliver Lodge''' 
English physicist, inventor and writer (1851-1940) involved in the development of wireless telegraphy and radio. After the death of his son in 1915, Lodge became interested in spiritualism and life after death and wrote several books on the subject. Lodge conducted research on lightning, electricity, electromagnetism and wrote about the aether, themes that are repeated throughout ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Joseph_Lodge Wikipedia entry].

'''William Crookes''' 
English chemist and physicist (1832-1919) who worked in spectroscopy and whose work pioneered the construction and use of vacuum tubes. Like Oliver Lodge, Crookes was also a spiritualist, which appears to be Pynchon's reason for grouping him with others in this passage, although his experiments in electricity and light also tie in with these themes in ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crookes Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Piper''' 
Probably [http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/piper.htm Leonora Piper] 1857-1950.

'''Eusapia Palladino''' 
(1854-1918) Famous italian spiritualist medium.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino Wikipedia entry]. It's fair to say she was often caught cheating.

'''W.T. Stead''' 
William T. Stead (1849-1912), British writer, poet, social crusader, and spiritualist. He went down with the ''Titanic.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Stead Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Burchell''' 
The Yorkshire Seeress, investigated by WT Stead. [http://www.wholeagain.com/prophecyfodor.html cite]

'''assassination''' 
Trouble with the time here. Lew's timeline points pretty strongly to autumn 1900. A séance that's "about to" go on Mme. Eskimoff's résumé, however, leads the murder of the Serbian king and queen by three months, and the murder itself occurred in June 1903, which seems to imply March of that year.

'''Alexander and Draga Obrenovich, the King and Queen of Serbia''' 
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Obrenovich Wikipedia] the assassination occured on 11 June 1903, so the seance at which Mrs. Burchell "witnessed" it, should have taken place in March 1903.

'''Parsons-Short Auxetophone''' 
[http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/auxetophone/auxetoph.htm pic and info]. The Auxetophone appears to have been a sound amplification device, not a recorder.

'''electros of the original wax impressions''' 
A thin film of metal was electroplated onto the wax, then peeled off and wrapped around a new cylinder.

==Page 229==

'''syntonic''' 
A term used in both engineering and psychology. Psychology: "Characterized by a high degree of emotional responsiveness to the environment." Electricity: "Of or relating to two oscillating circuits having the same resonant frequency."

'''the Russo-Turkish War''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War,_1877–1878 The Russo-Turkish War] (1877-1878), the latest Russo-Turkish War of many fought between these two contries since 16th century as a result of Russian attempts to find an outlet on the Black Sea and to conquer the Caucasus, dominate the Balkan Peninsula, gain control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, and retain access to world trade routes. The last Russo-Turkish War came as a result of the anti-Ottoman uprising (1875) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria. On Russian instigation, Serbia and Montenegro joined the rebels; after securing Austrian neutrality, Russia openly entered the War in 1877. The War ended in 1878 resulted in the Treaty of San Stefano which so thoroughly revised the map in favor of Russia and her client, Bulgaria, that the European powers called a conference (the Congress of Berlin) to revise its terms by the Treaty of Berlin.

==Page 230==

'''King's... Girton''' 
King's College is one of the most famous and historic colleges at Cambridge, founded in 1441. Girton College, Cambridge, was established in 1869 as the first residential college for women in England.

'''Michaelmas term''' 
The fall term, starting early October (1900 here). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaelmas_term Wikipedia]

'''tweeny''' 
A [http://www.bartleby.com/68/30/830.html between-maid].

'''Edward Oxford''' 
attempted to shoot Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, at the time of her first pregnancy (1840).[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Oxford Wikipedia]

'''had the young Queen died then without issue''' 
Nookshaft posits two scenarios: (1) The implicit, unmentioned, and not as "interesting" possibility that everything is actual, as it "appears" to be in the "real" world, surrounding Queen Victoria; that she is simply an old, vain regent. (2) "the 'real' Vic is elsewhere," and the current, aged Victoria is a ghostly stand-in. Nookshaft implies that this figure is a proxy or puppet of Ernst-August. If this were "the case," then the question shifts to the following: (a) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive in cahoots with Ernst-August in the "real" world? or: (b) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive NOT in cahoots with Ernst-August, who nevertheless ascends to the throne with real-Vic out of the way, and imposes the stand-in? In which case: What would be the motivation of the underworld-entity third-party? And who, or what, specifically, is it?

'''sixty years ago''' 
One event of 1840, the attempt on Victoria's life, is referred to as sixty years ago; another, the issue of the first adhesive stamps, as more than sixty years ago.

'''Salic law''' 
originated in the Late Roman Empire as Germanic tribes invaded and their law codes were translated into Latin and written down. Salic Law was that of the
Franks who settled in present-day northern France and the law code of Charlemagne. Over the course of the Middle Ages it was largely replaced by Roman Law. For examples, see [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/salic-law.html]. 

However, Salic Law continued to be used in a number of European areas to decide matters of noble inheritance. Specifically, Salic Law stated that no female could inherit rulership. (above by [[User:Owl of Minerva|Owl of Minerva]] 18:03, 4 April 2007 (PDT)) When King William IV, ruler of both the United Kingdom and Hanover, died, the Crowns separated. Hanover practiced Salic law, while Britain did not. King William's niece Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, but the throne of Hanover went to William's brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_Law Wikipedia entry]

'''Tory despotism''' 
Thatcher?
: Not necessarily-- it describes Ernest himself. "The Duke of Cumberland had a reputation as one of the least pleasant of the sons of George III. Politically an arch-reactionary, he opposed the 1828 Catholic Emancipation Bill proposed by the government of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Augustus_I_of_Hanover Wikipedia entry]

It can describe Ernst August and still be an allegory of Thatcher. The description of Ireland fits that of some world-views during her time.

'''Catholics''' 
Someone famously cited James Joyce as proof that Catholics shouldn't get university educations.

==Page 231==

'''Orange Lodges''' 
Lodges of the Orange Order, a protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly in Northern Ireland and Scotland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_lodge Wikipedia entry]

'''"from the first to the twelfth of July, anniversaries of the Boyne and Aughrim."''' 
i.e. anniversaries of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Boyne Battle of the Boyne] and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aughrim Battle of Aughrim] of the Williamite War in Ireland.

[[Image:pennyblack.jpg|thumb|100px|right|The first adhesive stamp, 1840]]
'''"the first adhesive stamps of 1840"''' 
This stamp has come to be called the Penny Black. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]

'''"immune to Time, [...] neither of them aging"''' 
Cf Oscar Wilde's only novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray], in which Dorian Gray remains young while his portrait ages.

'''springtide''' 
Cf Stray's pregnancy, a "dreamy thing" (page 201). The definition of springtide is springtime.

==Page 232==

'''Éliphaz Lévi''' 
A/K/A Eliphas Levi, ''nom de plume'' of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), French occultist and writer who pioneered a revival of Magick in the 19th Century, and was an influence on A.E. Waite, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley. An acquaintance of novelist Edward ("It was a dark and stormy night") Bulwer-Lytton. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliphas_Levi Wikipedia entry].

'''punters''' 
Punter is being used in the sense of someone who bets, someone who is taking a chance.
Or more probably in the common extended sense meaning merely "customer"

'''''akousmata''''' 
Greek: things heard. [[A|Good information under "A" in the alpha index.]]

'''number twenty-four''' 
Or 25? [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp11.htm etext]

'''Iamblichus''' 
(ca. 245 - ca. 325, Greek) was a neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichus_%28philosopher%29 Wikipedia]

'''maquillage''' 
French: makeup.

==Page 233==

'''Collis Brown's Mixture''' 
Contained morphine, chloroform, and caramel, among other things. [http://admin.safescript.com/drugcgic.cgi/DRUG?1006901319+0 Full ingredients]

'''xylene''' 
Xylene abuse is similar to "glue sniffing"-- xylene is a strong solvent able to cause several damages to health, especially to the brain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylene wikipedia]

'''a thousand pounds a year''' 
Over $100,000 today. [http://futureboy.homeip.net/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=1000&currency=pounds&fromYear=1900 cite]

'''"pinky"''' 
Condy's fluid is pink to purple. Methylated spirits is a kind of denatured alcohol: 95% ethyl alcohol, 5% methyl alcohol. "Pinky" would have a variety of effects, very possibly including blindness.

==Page 234==

'''Condy's fluid''' 
A disinfectant used to treat and prevent Scarlet Fever, among other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bollmann_Condy Wikipedia]

'''''tonight's the night''''' 
Considering the content here, probable reference to Neil Young's drug-addled album and its title song, "Tonight's The Night" from 1975. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonight%27s_the_Night_%28album%29 Wiki]

'''Cheapside''' 
an important market street in the City of London.

'''mews''' 
A street originally for stabling; but in modern times often converted into houses/apartments.

'''Coombs de Bottle''' 
"comes the bottle" ?

'''Russian duck''' 
Duck is strong, untwilled linen or cotton, lighter and finer than canvas. Russian duck is coarse, heavy and unbleached but softer than English duck.

==Page 235==

'''sensitive flames''' 
Cf GR p.29-32, 715.

'''extractors . . . distillation columns''' 
Separatory apparatus. An extractor works on differences in solubility, a distillation column differences in volatility.

'''tremblers and timers''' 
A trembler is a kind of motion detector used in both bombs and alarms; one kind has a flexible stem with a heavy contact on the free end so that disturbing the package it contains causes a trigger circuit to close. A timer uses a clocklike mechanism to bring two contacts together.

'''proper solvent procedures''' 
Famous 1960s "Anarchist Cookbook" was infamously inaccurate. [http://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-C-066-William-Powell/dp/0962303208 Amazon w/author's note]

==Page 236==

'''Breathless hush in the close tonight''' 
Dr. De Bottle quoting from Henry Newbolt's poem [[Vitai Lampada|"Vitaï Lampada,"]] which makes school games a metaphor and model for martial bravery.

'''The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly''' 
Cf Hornung's 'Gentleman Thief' and cricket player, Raffles. [http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/hardknox.shtml info]

Reminds me of the Krikkit Robots in Douglas Adams' ''Life, The Universe, and Everything,'' where a bomb is put in place of a Cricket Ball at a match between Britain and Australia. 

Here and elswhere the spelling of the cricket ground should be 'Headingley'.

'''The Ashes''' 
An international cricket series between England and Australia dating back to 1882. [http://www.334notout.com/ashes/reports/report21.htm dates] A number of references in this chapter relate to this rivalry. For example, on this page the English cricket ball is compared to the Australian "kookaburra". Kookaburra is the brand name of the balls used in Australia, in England it's Duke. The properties of the English ball was one of the keys to England's success in the summer of 2005. Was Pynchon's writing here influenced by the hype in the UK at the time?

'''Phosgene''' 
A poison gas used in World War I.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene Wikipedia]

'''logwood''' 
Source of red dye. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logwood Wikipedia]

'''exhiliration''' 
Misspelling of ''exhilaration.''

==Page 237==

'''beige substance''' 
Presumably Cyclomite.

'''Happy Birthday! . . . Gemini''' 
Ordinarily you would think this tagged the date as 21 May to 20 June [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_%28astrology%29 Wikipedia.] But other evidence in the text points to autumn.

'''get the Ashes back . . . next year''' 
On page 236 the Ashes (Test Matches, cricket competitions between England and Australia) are "in progress." At some time previous to this conversation Mme. Eskimoff said England will regain the trophy "next year" provided they use the young bowler Bosanquet (next entry).

Test Matches took place in (a) December 1901 to March 1902, Australia victorious; (b) May to August 1902, Australia again; (c) December 1903 to March 1904, England getting the Ashes back and Bosanquet figuring as a key bowler. When are we?

'''Bosanquet''' 
Another Ashes reference. [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/9158.html Bernard Bosanquet] invented the bosie (or googly), as described here, around 1900. A major factor in England's 2005 Ashes success was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_swing reverse swing], another type of delivery whose physical dynamics are poorly understood.

'''Pom''' 
A term for a British person commonly used in Australian English.

'''Hebrew letter Shin''' 
Obviously a nod to the Vulcan greeting in ''Star Trek'', with the distinctive hand sign and the phrase, "Live long and prosper." Perhaps also to the Jewish faith of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. See [http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/v-salute.html The Jewish origin of the Vulcan Salute]

Pynchon placed one of these in ''Mason & Dixon'', as well:

:Dixon discovers "The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter ''Shin'' and to signify, 'Live long and prosper.'( M&D 485) 
Might there be a further connection between The Cohen of T.W.I.T., the "Cohens of Paris" and these backwoods Kabbalists?

Also, note the hand on the devil tarot card above.

==Page 238==

'''Second Law of Thermodynamics''' 
The law of entropy... "The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Rudolf Clausius) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics]

There's no such thing as a perfectly efficient engine, i.e., a box that does work by taking in heat from where there is lots of heat (e.g., combustion chamber) and throwing off heat where there is not much (exhaust pipe). Something always gets lost. Similarly, the transfer of money from where there is plenty (bank) to where there isn't much (Europe) is never perfectly efficient.

"He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about something called entropy. The word bothered him... But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat engines, the other to do with communication... The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell's Demon. As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was offset by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where... Entropy is a figure of speech, then, a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow." ''The Crying of Lot 49'' (Pages 84 - 85)

'''''morsus fundamento''''' 
Latin: A bite on the ass?

The meaning is that he wouldn't know metaphysics if it bit him in the ass. Like "octogenarihexation" ("86"-ing) in Vineland--the vulgar faux fancied up.

'''three-percent consols''' 
British "consolidated" bonds, for many years the conservative investment ''par excellence.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consols wikipedia]

==Page 239==

'''mental''' 
Not mental as in "of the mind" but mental as in "mad". "You're mental, you are" is a common british playground taunt.

'''Colney Hatch''' 
London lunatic asylum. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colney_Hatch_Lunatic_Asylum Wikipedia]

'''Out of the dust . . . beam of morning sunlight''' 
I.e., sometimes your horse wins.

'''ENCYCLICAL''' 
An encyclical is a letter circulated by the pope or other figure of high authority in a body of believers. A comprehensive [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical Wikipedia article] explains and adds a list of papal encyclicals. An encyclical usually takes its first 2 or 3 words as its title (''Multi et Unus'' in this case).

Of course, the Vatican would strongly protest that McTaggart, an atheist, should send out an encyclical!

'''MCTAGGART . . . HARDY''' 
Seems to refer to a historical logician joke. [http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Science_Humor/1210.html explanation] Professor McTaggart was, perhaps, the most famous philosopher
who argued that Time did not exist as we seem to experience it.
W.H. Hardy was a very famous Cambridge mathematician who knew all the
famous philosophers in England. 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._E._McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis (J. M. E.) McTaggart] (1866-1925), British philosopher. He was born in London and educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured Philosophy at Trinity College from 1897 to 1923. His brilliant commentaries and studies on Hegel's dialectic (1896), cosmology (1901) and logic (1910) were preliminaries to his own constructive system-building in ''Nature of Existence'' (3 vols., 1921-1927). In his 1908 essay "The Unreality of Time" he argued that our perception of time is an illusion (Cf [[ATD_397-428#Page_412|page 412]]: dismissing . . . the ''existence'' of Time).

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hardy.html Godfrey Harold Hardy] (1877-1947), English mathematician. He was a lecturer at Cambridge (1906-1919), professor at Oxford (1919-31) and Cambridge (1931-47). Concurrently with Wilhelm Weinberg developed Hardy-Weinberg law (1906) describing genetic distribution and dequilibrium in large populations. He was also known for contributions to complex analysis, Diophantine analysis, Fourier series, distribution of prime numbers, etc.

'''''Multi et Unus''''' 
Many and One.

'''CREATE MORE DUKES''' and '''EXPROPRIATE CHUCKERS''' 
Is the grafitti in Cambridge another cricketing reference? Dukes are the balls used in England (cf. p236). Chucking (or bending the arm when bowling) is an emotive topic in cricket that arises from time to time. It first arose around 1900 [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/258016.html]. In 2005 it caused administrators to change the rules of the game [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/144358.html].

'''The Laplacian''' 
A bar in Cambridge.
::Are you saying it is a real establishment?

::Can't say it's a fact.

A ''Laplacian'' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplacian Wikipedia entry]) is a differential operator named after Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827), a famous French mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Wikipedia entry for Laplace]

:Yesyes, but is/was there a real public house named "The Laplacian"?

:Not during ''my'' stay in Cambridge (1998-2000). Also not today, according to [http://www.cambridgepubs.com/alphabetical/ this] list.

"the Laplacian, a relatively remote mathematicians' pub" - a little Pynchonian joke? The Laplacian operator is a component of the Schrödinger equation, the basis of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics was famously rejected by Albert Einstein (many references on the net but see [http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/dice.html Stephen Hawking]), known for his theories of relativity. Moreover, quantum mechanics deals with the very small and relativity with the very large (this is a simplification of course), so the Laplacian is indeed remote from relativity!

==Page 240==

'''Worse than Gordon at Khartoum''' 
Refers to Charles George Gordon, British Major-General, whose attempted defense of Khartoum versus Arabi rebels in 1884-85 ended with his beheading. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_George_Gordon Wikipedia] cf. Basil Dearden's 1966 film ''Khartoum'', in which the role of Gordon is played by Charlton Heston.

==Page 241==

'''"You recognize him?"''' 
As, presumably, Webb.
:How can that be? Webb is dead, there's nothing to suggest he went to England, the costume is not right for him, and—most tellingly—his medium is dynamite, not phosgene.
:Who might Lew recognize in the photo? The "suspects" are Neville, Nigel, the Grand Cohen, Dr. Coombs De Bottle, Clive Crouchmas and Professor Renfrew. If Prof. Werfner looks much like Prof. Renfrew, he goes on the list too. If the "Gentleman Bomber" is allowed to be possibly female, add Yashmeen and Mme. Eskimoff. We haven't met anyone else (except members of the Icosadyad, who don't have faces).
:Suppose we rule out the ladies and Werfner. Neville or Nigel wouldn't be able to hide their identities with a suit of white flannels. Renfrew is sitting right there when Lew sees the picture, but Lew's reaction (his stomach sinks) does not seem Lew-like if it's Renfrew he has recognized. The Cohen, De Bottle and Crouchmas are left.
:Would Lew experience dread on spotting Crouchmas? He doesn't know much about C.C. at this point, so it isn't clear why he would suppress that recognition.
:Seeing the Cohen might lead to this gastric reaction: Lew might think he's on the fringe of an anarchist group again (and look where it got him the last time). The Cohen stays on the list.
:Dr. De Bottle not only follows cricket but bets on it; he speaks almost with reverence about phosgene; he knows a nonobvious fact about the bombs; and he dresses like a gentleman. None of these points applies to the Cohen. And recognizing De Bottle would give Lew that sinking feeling because D.B. is purportedly fighting against bombers on behalf of the government.
:De Bottle goes to the top of the short list.

'''A bosie from a beamer''' 
More cricket! A bosie is now more commonly known as a googly (cf. p237). A beamer is a full-pitched delivery that reaches the batsman above waist height.

==Page 242==

[[Image:globenorth.gif|thumb|150px|The northern hemisphere]]

'''''unheimlich''''' 
German: uncanny, sinister.

 

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 219-242

2007-04-09T14:40:55Z

Gobbag: /* Page 239 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 219==

[[image:tetractys.png|thumb|175px|right|The Tetractys]]'''True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys''' 
The Tetractys is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, and nutbars of other affiliations since. It has all kinds of symbological meaning, including the four elements, the organization of space, the Tarot, etc. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys Wikipedia entry];

:In the Pythagorean tetractys the supreme symbol of universal forces and processes are set forth the theories of the Greeks concerning color and music. The first three dots represent the threefold White Light, which is the Godhead containing potentially all sound and color. The remaining seven dots are the colors of the spectrum and the notes of the musical scale. The colors and tones are the active creative powers which, emanating from the First Cause, establish the universe. The seven are divided into two groups, one containing three powers and the other four a relationship also shown in the tetractys. The higher group that of three becomes the spiritual nature of the created universe; the lower group that of four manifests as the irrational sphere, or inferior world. <ref>From [http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/ ''The Secret Teachings of All Ages''] by Manly P. Hall (1928)</ref>

:This division (three/four) has to be related to the "trivium" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and "quadrivium" (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) of the [http://www.cosmopolis.com/villa/liberal-arts.html Medieval liberal arts.]

More effably, if you flip the Tetractys left to right, it gives the positions of the pins in ten-pin bowling.

The acronym T.W.I.T is most appropriate: a twit is an ineffectual buffoon. Neville and Nigel are certainly twits.

I believe the above really misses the Big Symbol, i.e., Pynchon's linking of T.W.I.T. with the vagina, i.e., the female ''sex'' organ. "T.W.I.T." sounds like no, ''is'' a cross between "clit" and "twat." And, natch, it's headed up by [[#Page 220|Nookshaft]]. And, let's face it, that tetractys is surely an inverted beaver, yes? (See [[ATD 171-198#Page 183|"Beavers of the Brain"]]). Its male counterpart is [[ATD 397-428#Page 405|Candlebrow U.]], to be encountered down the road apiece (and that ain't no spoiler!).

'''Chunxton Crescent''' 
Invented by Pynchon. "Crescent" is a female symbol in many mythologies and cultures, and it reinforces T.W.I.T.'s association with the female sex. But "Chunxton"?

:The moon is seen as a female symbol, and was worshipped in ancient times as a powerful force. It is believed to be linked to the unconscious and our feminine side. The sacredness of the moon has been connected with the basic cyclic rhythms of life. The changing phases of the moon were linked to the death and rebirth seen in crops and the seasons, and also to the female monthly cycle that controls human fertility. The moon calendar is still important and many festivals exist around the lunar phases. [http://www.new-age.co.uk/moon-dates.htm]

''Chunxton'' may be derived from "chunk stone" or "chunk(s) town." I'm inclined to favor the first. "Chunk stone" has two main meanings: (1) stone that's quarried in chunks instead of blocks, slabs or crystals; (2) a magical stone that figures in some American Indian stories. Turquoise and amethyst chunk stones are often made into jewelry as-is, or [http://www.bridastone.com/chunkstone.htm larger chunks of (say) marble] can be used as decoration. Here are links to two Indian stories in which people use chunk stones in finding or tracking: [http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/se/mtsi/mtsi156.htm first,] [http://romeoandjuliet.ws/books/native_american/se/mtsi/mtsi270.shtml second.] Of course it's also possible that "chunk" is the verb meaning "throw," in which case there ought to be a "glass houses" connection somewhere; I can't find it.

'''Tyburnia''' 
"Tyburnia occupies the ground on the north side of Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens, and stretches from Edgware-road on the east to about Inverness-terrace on the west. This is not, strictly speaking, a fashionable quarter; but it is not absolutely unfashionable, and is a very favourite part with those — lawyers, merchants, and others—who have to reside in town the greater part of the year." Charles Dickens (Jr.), ''Dickens's Dictionary of London'', 1879.

'''Sir John Soane''' 
(1753 – 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Soane Wikipedia entry]

'''Madame Blavatsky''' 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Russian-born founder of the Theosophical Society. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and false or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Blavatsky Wikipedia]

'''century had rushed . . . out the other side''' 
An instant of zero, not a whole year, because they aren't yet "out the other side" of 1900. ??? A century is 100 years. The one referred to here lasted from 1800-1899 and, since it's 1900, it has "rushed to its end."
:Missing the point. The image focuses on the ''zero.'' And please, let's not have that sterile argument about when a century begins!

==Page 220==

'''not even if that tartan were authentic''' 
It's a solecism in England, but is (or was) a prosecutable offense in Scotland, to wear the tartan of a clan one doesn't belong to.

'''Caen stone''' 
A cream-colored limestone for building, found near Caen, France.

'''syrinx''' 
a primitive wind instrument consisting of several parallel pipes bound together; panpipes.

'''lyre''' 
an ancient form of harp, so syrinx and lyre are like flute and harp. A famous Concerto for flute and harp is the work of G. F. Handel, who also composed the ''Messiah.''

'''ten-in-one''' 
Ten sideshow acts for one admission. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow Wikipedia]

'''Nicholas Nookshaft''' 
Grand Cohen Nicholas Nookshaft's name reinforces the linking of [[#Page 219|T.W.I.T.]] to the female sex organ, "Nooky shaft" being a vulgarism for the vagina. Interestingly, "shaft" is both a rod or pole, or penis, as well as a vertical passageway, thus its connations are bisexual.

'''Grand Cohen''' 
'Cohen' is Hebrew for 'priest'.

==Page 221==

'''Couldn't have been the same world as the one you're in now''' 
Raising the possibility that Lew got blown up in one world and shifted to another.

'''"Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really."''' 
Could this be the explanation for some of the most inexplicable scenes from the book thus far: Lew Basnight's first encounter with the Drave group (around [[ATD_26-56#Page_39|page 39]]) and Hunter Penhallow's escape from the mysterious creature (around [[ATD_149-170#Pages_154-155|page 154]])? Parallel worlds?

''''Tzaddik'''' 
A righteous Jew. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadik Wikipedia]

==Page 222==

'''The Tetractys isn't the only thing round here that's ineffable''' 
Schoolyard joke. "F" a euphemism for fuck, so "ineffable" = unfuckable also describes Yashmeen.

'''Eighteenth Hussars''' 
Prestigious British cavalry regiment. Stationed in India 1864-76 and 1890-98; Halfcourt's secondment must have taken place at one of these times.

'''Simla''' 
British outpost in Himalayas. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimla Wikipedia]

'''Smartly taken at silly point''' 
A cricketing reference. Silly point is a fielding position very close to the batsman. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=smartly.taken+silly.point examples]

'''To know, to dare, to will, to keep silent''' 
Mystical formula. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=to.know.to.dare.to.will examples]
The four precepts of Western Magick, extensively discussed in the writings of Aleister Crowley.

'''In the States, "detective" doesn't mean—''' 
. . . An agent who solves criminal cases. The major "detective" bureaus hired personnel out as bodyguards and muscle.

'''"There is but one 'case' which occupies us"''' 
This echoes the famous quote from Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'': "The world is all that is the case." (See the full text of the ''Tractatus'' [http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html here].) This quote also factors in heavily in V. (Specifically, in two places: there's the [http://www.phil-reed.com/2006/02/14/the-love-songs-of-thomas-pynchon/ P's and Q's love song], and also in Captain Weissman's repeating, encoded, hallucinated message over the telegraph in Africa.)

'''The Number 22''' 
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really. 22 is the number of cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, the section of the deck that has been removed from the modern playing deck which only has the suits (elements) and the Court cards. The 22 Major Arcana are numbers 0 to 21 and move from The Fool card to the Universe. Purportedly and symbolically, the progression of cards tell a tale of the evolutionary path of the Soul in its course. The 22 cards also, in some systems, map onto the 22 paths that connect the spheres of the Kabalistic Tree of Life (which also is mentioned in this chapter). An understanding of the Tarot cards cannot be achieved with an understanding how they relate to the Tree of Life. They are the relationships between the Sephiroths which in turn at 10 in number, just like the Tetractys and portray the energies that flow from the highest monad of Divinity (Kether) down into the manifested world (Malkuth). Pynchon makes use of both the Tarot and the Kabalah in Against the Day as well as Gravity's Rainbow.

See also the novel ''The Greater Trumps'' by Charles Williams for a similar intrusion of the characters of the Major Arcana into everyday English life.

==Page 223==

'''"And the crime... just what would be the nature of that?"''' 
Might Lew himself be one of the 22 suspects? Perhaps the ineffable crime is what made people treat him like a pariah earlier in the book.

==Page 224==

'''"'walking out'"''' 
A walking date.

'''the veil of ''maya''''' 
In Hinduism, maya is the phenomenal world of separate objects and people, which creates for some the illusion that it is the only reality. In Hindu philosophy, maya is believed to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self. Many philosophies or religions seek to "pierce the veil" in order to glimpse the transcendent truth. Arthur Schopenhauer used the term "Veil of Maya" to describe his view of ''The World as Will and Representation''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion) Wikipedia entry]

'''the ancient London landscape . . . known to the Druids''' 
Peter Ackroyd's recent ''London, the Biography'' devotes many pages to sacred and magical features of the city. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid "Druid"].

'''Trumper's''' 
London's royal barbers since 1875. [http://www.trumpers.com/ site]

'''On this island [...] all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted''' 
A sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Pynchon's December 2006 letter written in defense of novelist Ian McEwan: "Given the British genius for coded utterance..." [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/06/nwriter06.xml Image of Letter]

'''crosswords in newspapers''' 
The first crossword to appear in a newspaper was in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossword#History 1913]. Cryptic crosswords in British newspapers certainly match Pynchon's description. See, for example, [http://www.crossword.org.uk/listen.htm the Listener crossword].

==Page 225==

'''Girton College''' 
For women, founded 1869. [http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/about/history/brief.html history]

'''Next they'll be letting you folks vote.''' 
Women were granted the right to vote in England in 1928.

'''"the vast jangling thronged somehow monumental London evening"''' 
This kind of eschewing of punctuation might be expected in Joyce but it's not typical of Pynchon and seems to serve no special purpose here. A typo?

'''Pamela Colman Smith''' 
Illustrator of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith "Wikipedia"].

'''Arthur Edward Waite''' 
Occultist and co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Waite Wikipedia]

'''four stone''' 
56 pounds.

'''Uckenfays''' 
Ucken-fay is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin "pig latin"] for 'fucken'.

'''''gaver du visage''''' 
A literal translation of "stuff one's face", though this is not how it is said in French (it would be se gaver or se baffrer). [http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/g/gaver.htm cite]

'''cigar-divan''' 
A smoking salon (divan) for cigar smokers.

Interestingly, a work by Robert Louis Stevenson, from 1903, entitled The Dynamiter begins with a "Prologue of the Cigar Divan".

==Page 226==

'''Seven Dials''' 
bad area in London, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dials Wikipedia entry]

[[image:tarotdevil.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Devil by Colman-Smith]]

'''growler''' 
Four-wheeled [http://www.bbno.freeserve.co.uk/glossary.htm carriage] drawn by four horses. Supplanted by the Hansom cab.

<div id="renfrew"></div>'''Renfrew at Cambridge and Werfner at Göttingen''' 
Note that each Professor's name is the other's spelled backward.

Also notice the theme of dual natures or forces. The two professors are "bound and ... could not separate even if they wanted to." They become rivals within the broader conflict of the 'Great Game' -- the political rivalry over Central Asia being played out by the various European powers, but especially by Great Britain and the Russian Empire.

[http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambuniv/index.html Cambridge University] is one of the oldest and the best universities in the world. In 2009 it will be celebrating its 800th Anniversary. In its early day, Cambridge was a center of the new learning of the Renaissance and of the theology of the Reformation; in modern times it has excelled in science. It is now a confederation of 31 Colleges (such as King's, Girton, St.John, Trinity and others mentioned in ATD), consists of over 100 departments and faculties, and other institutions. Since 1904, 81 affiliates of Cambridge have won Nobel Prize in every category: 29 in Physics, 22 in Medicine, 19 in Chemistry, 7 in Economics, 2 in Literature and 2 in Peace.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-August_University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen Göttingen University], one of the most famous universities in Europe, founded in Göttingen, Germany, in 1737 by King George II of England in his capacity as Elector of Hanover. At the end of the 19th century, it became world famous because of its Departments of Mathematics and Physics and rivaled Cambridge for eminence. The reputation of the university was founded by many eminent professors who are commemorated by statues and plaques all over the campus. It claimed 44 Nobel Laureates. But it suffered from the 1933 Great Purge of the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish Physics" and never recovered its original fame.

'''Berlin Conference of 1878''' 
Divided Balkans after Russo-Turkish War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin Wikipedia]

'''English, . . . , Japanese—not to mention indigenous—components''' 
''Not to mention'' them was exactly the point as the Great Powers sorted out the Ottoman possessions.

==Page 227==

'''"The Great Game"''' 
The Great Game was a term used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The term was later popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, ''Kim''. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia entry] Also the name of Padzhitnoff's airship.

'''mamluk lamps''' 
A [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/07/nfe/hob_17.190.985.htm mosque lamp]
from the [http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/mamluks.php mamluk] era.

'''...the Kabbalist Tree of Life, with the names of the Sephiroth spelled out in Hebrew, which had brought her more than enough of that uniquely snot-nosed British anti-Semitism... ''' 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] is the ancient study of Jewish mysticism, long shrouded in mystery and kept from all but a devout few of the most dedicated Talmudic scholars. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tree_of_Life_Medieval.jpg.jpg Tree of Life] is one of the central symbols of Kabbalah, supposedly a physical representation of the path of enlightenment from the most base knowledge of the physical world (at the bottom), to the highest spiritual planes of understanding (at the top). The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot Sephiroth] are the nodes of the Tree, representing the various "stages" of understanding. Of course, tihs is all a very gross oversimplifcation and hardly does justice to the term itself.

The "Quabbalah" or "Cabalah" being studied by Madonna and others in Hollywood is a secularized and co-opted form of the original Kabbalah, which is deeply connected to the Torah and Jewish life.

In Medieval Europe, Kabbalist scholars wore amulets and other symbols on their clothing, and were often misunderstood to be magicians or wizards (think Merlin). The common magician's expression "abra cadabra" has Kabbalistic origins.

'''"Eskimoff . . . I say what sort of name is that?"''' 
Tiptoeing around the real question, "Is she Jewish?"

'''English Rose''' 
The phrase "English Rose" or "Bonnie English Rose" when applied to a woman means her skin is unblemished, her coloring subtle, her temper sweet. Madame Eskimoff, in short, is a beauty in a traditional English style. 
(Incidentally, an officially unrecognized designation of [http://www.marinrose.org/englishroses.html roses].)

==Page 228==

'''Oliver Lodge''' 
English physicist, inventor and writer (1851-1940) involved in the development of wireless telegraphy and radio. After the death of his son in 1915, Lodge became interested in spiritualism and life after death and wrote several books on the subject. Lodge conducted research on lightning, electricity, electromagnetism and wrote about the aether, themes that are repeated throughout ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Joseph_Lodge Wikipedia entry].

'''William Crookes''' 
English chemist and physicist (1832-1919) who worked in spectroscopy and whose work pioneered the construction and use of vacuum tubes. Like Oliver Lodge, Crookes was also a spiritualist, which appears to be Pynchon's reason for grouping him with others in this passage, although his experiments in electricity and light also tie in with these themes in ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crookes Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Piper''' 
Probably [http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/piper.htm Leonora Piper] 1857-1950.

'''Eusapia Palladino''' 
(1854-1918) Famous italian spiritualist medium.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino Wikipedia entry]. It's fair to say she was often caught cheating.

'''W.T. Stead''' 
William T. Stead (1849-1912), British writer, poet, social crusader, and spiritualist. He went down with the ''Titanic.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Stead Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Burchell''' 
The Yorkshire Seeress, investigated by WT Stead. [http://www.wholeagain.com/prophecyfodor.html cite]

'''assassination''' 
Trouble with the time here. Lew's timeline points pretty strongly to autumn 1900. A séance that's "about to" go on Mme. Eskimoff's résumé, however, leads the murder of the Serbian king and queen by three months, and the murder itself occurred in June 1903, which seems to imply March of that year.

'''Alexander and Draga Obrenovich, the King and Queen of Serbia''' 
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Obrenovich Wikipedia] the assassination occured on 11 June 1903, so the seance at which Mrs. Burchell "witnessed" it, should have taken place in March 1903.

'''Parsons-Short Auxetophone''' 
[http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/auxetophone/auxetoph.htm pic and info]. The Auxetophone appears to have been a sound amplification device, not a recorder.

'''electros of the original wax impressions''' 
A thin film of metal was electroplated onto the wax, then peeled off and wrapped around a new cylinder.

==Page 229==

'''syntonic''' 
A term used in both engineering and psychology. Psychology: "Characterized by a high degree of emotional responsiveness to the environment." Electricity: "Of or relating to two oscillating circuits having the same resonant frequency."

'''the Russo-Turkish War''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War,_1877–1878 The Russo-Turkish War] (1877-1878), the latest Russo-Turkish War of many fought between these two contries since 16th century as a result of Russian attempts to find an outlet on the Black Sea and to conquer the Caucasus, dominate the Balkan Peninsula, gain control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, and retain access to world trade routes. The last Russo-Turkish War came as a result of the anti-Ottoman uprising (1875) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria. On Russian instigation, Serbia and Montenegro joined the rebels; after securing Austrian neutrality, Russia openly entered the War in 1877. The War ended in 1878 resulted in the Treaty of San Stefano which so thoroughly revised the map in favor of Russia and her client, Bulgaria, that the European powers called a conference (the Congress of Berlin) to revise its terms by the Treaty of Berlin.

==Page 230==

'''King's... Girton''' 
King's College is one of the most famous and historic colleges at Cambridge, founded in 1441. Girton College, Cambridge, was established in 1869 as the first residential college for women in England.

'''Michaelmas term''' 
The fall term, starting early October (1900 here). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaelmas_term Wikipedia]

'''tweeny''' 
A [http://www.bartleby.com/68/30/830.html between-maid].

'''Edward Oxford''' 
attempted to shoot Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, at the time of her first pregnancy (1840).[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Oxford Wikipedia]

'''had the young Queen died then without issue''' 
Nookshaft posits two scenarios: (1) The implicit, unmentioned, and not as "interesting" possibility that everything is actual, as it "appears" to be in the "real" world, surrounding Queen Victoria; that she is simply an old, vain regent. (2) "the 'real' Vic is elsewhere," and the current, aged Victoria is a ghostly stand-in. Nookshaft implies that this figure is a proxy or puppet of Ernst-August. If this were "the case," then the question shifts to the following: (a) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive in cahoots with Ernst-August in the "real" world? or: (b) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive NOT in cahoots with Ernst-August, who nevertheless ascends to the throne with real-Vic out of the way, and imposes the stand-in? In which case: What would be the motivation of the underworld-entity third-party? And who, or what, specifically, is it?

'''sixty years ago''' 
One event of 1840, the attempt on Victoria's life, is referred to as sixty years ago; another, the issue of the first adhesive stamps, as more than sixty years ago.

'''Salic law''' 
originated in the Late Roman Empire as Germanic tribes invaded and their law codes were translated into Latin and written down. Salic Law was that of the
Franks who settled in present-day northern France and the law code of Charlemagne. Over the course of the Middle Ages it was largely replaced by Roman Law. For examples, see [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/salic-law.html]. 

However, Salic Law continued to be used in a number of European areas to decide matters of noble inheritance. Specifically, Salic Law stated that no female could inherit rulership. (above by [[User:Owl of Minerva|Owl of Minerva]] 18:03, 4 April 2007 (PDT)) When King William IV, ruler of both the United Kingdom and Hanover, died, the Crowns separated. Hanover practiced Salic law, while Britain did not. King William's niece Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, but the throne of Hanover went to William's brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_Law Wikipedia entry]

'''Tory despotism''' 
Thatcher?
: Not necessarily-- it describes Ernest himself. "The Duke of Cumberland had a reputation as one of the least pleasant of the sons of George III. Politically an arch-reactionary, he opposed the 1828 Catholic Emancipation Bill proposed by the government of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Augustus_I_of_Hanover Wikipedia entry]

It can describe Ernst August and still be an allegory of Thatcher. The description of Ireland fits that of some world-views during her time.

'''Catholics''' 
Someone famously cited James Joyce as proof that Catholics shouldn't get university educations.

==Page 231==

'''Orange Lodges''' 
Lodges of the Orange Order, a protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly in Northern Ireland and Scotland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_lodge Wikipedia entry]

'''"from the first to the twelfth of July, anniversaries of the Boyne and Aughrim."''' 
i.e. anniversaries of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Boyne Battle of the Boyne] and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aughrim Battle of Aughrim] of the Williamite War in Ireland.

[[Image:pennyblack.jpg|thumb|100px|right|The first adhesive stamp, 1840]]
'''"the first adhesive stamps of 1840"''' 
This stamp has come to be called the Penny Black. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]

'''"immune to Time, [...] neither of them aging"''' 
Cf Oscar Wilde's only novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray], in which Dorian Gray remains young while his portrait ages.

'''springtide''' 
Cf Stray's pregnancy, a "dreamy thing" (page 201). The definition of springtide is springtime.

==Page 232==

'''Éliphaz Lévi''' 
A/K/A Eliphas Levi, ''nom de plume'' of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), French occultist and writer who pioneered a revival of Magick in the 19th Century, and was an influence on A.E. Waite, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley. An acquaintance of novelist Edward ("It was a dark and stormy night") Bulwer-Lytton. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliphas_Levi Wikipedia entry].

'''punters''' 
Punter is being used in the sense of someone who bets, someone who is taking a chance.
Or more probably in the common extended sense meaning merely "customer"

'''''akousmata''''' 
Greek: things heard. [[A|Good information under "A" in the alpha index.]]

'''number twenty-four''' 
Or 25? [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp11.htm etext]

'''Iamblichus''' 
(ca. 245 - ca. 325, Greek) was a neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichus_%28philosopher%29 Wikipedia]

'''maquillage''' 
French: makeup.

==Page 233==

'''Collis Brown's Mixture''' 
Contained morphine, chloroform, and caramel, among other things. [http://admin.safescript.com/drugcgic.cgi/DRUG?1006901319+0 Full ingredients]

'''xylene''' 
Xylene abuse is similar to "glue sniffing"-- xylene is a strong solvent able to cause several damages to health, especially to the brain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylene wikipedia]

'''a thousand pounds a year''' 
Over $100,000 today. [http://futureboy.homeip.net/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=1000&currency=pounds&fromYear=1900 cite]

'''"pinky"''' 
Condy's fluid is pink to purple. Methylated spirits is a kind of denatured alcohol: 95% ethyl alcohol, 5% methyl alcohol. "Pinky" would have a variety of effects, very possibly including blindness.

==Page 234==

'''Condy's fluid''' 
A disinfectant used to treat and prevent Scarlet Fever, among other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bollmann_Condy Wikipedia]

'''''tonight's the night''''' 
Considering the content here, probable reference to Neil Young's drug-addled album and its title song, "Tonight's The Night" from 1975. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonight%27s_the_Night_%28album%29 Wiki]

'''Cheapside''' 
an important market street in the City of London.

'''mews''' 
A street originally for stabling; but in modern times often converted into houses/apartments.

'''Coombs de Bottle''' 
"comes the bottle" ?

'''Russian duck''' 
Duck is strong, untwilled linen or cotton, lighter and finer than canvas. Russian duck is coarse, heavy and unbleached but softer than English duck.

==Page 235==

'''sensitive flames''' 
Cf GR p.29-32, 715.

'''extractors . . . distillation columns''' 
Separatory apparatus. An extractor works on differences in solubility, a distillation column differences in volatility.

'''tremblers and timers''' 
A trembler is a kind of motion detector used in both bombs and alarms; one kind has a flexible stem with a heavy contact on the free end so that disturbing the package it contains causes a trigger circuit to close. A timer uses a clocklike mechanism to bring two contacts together.

'''proper solvent procedures''' 
Famous 1960s "Anarchist Cookbook" was infamously inaccurate. [http://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-C-066-William-Powell/dp/0962303208 Amazon w/author's note]

==Page 236==

'''Breathless hush in the close tonight''' 
Dr. De Bottle quoting from Henry Newbolt's poem [[Vitai Lampada|"Vitaï Lampada,"]] which makes school games a metaphor and model for martial bravery.

'''The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly''' 
Cf Hornung's 'Gentleman Thief' and cricket player, Raffles. [http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/hardknox.shtml info]

Reminds me of the Krikkit Robots in Douglas Adams' ''Life, The Universe, and Everything,'' where a bomb is put in place of a Cricket Ball at a match between Britain and Australia. 

Here and elswhere the spelling of the cricket ground should be 'Headingley'.

'''The Ashes''' 
An international cricket series between England and Australia dating back to 1882. [http://www.334notout.com/ashes/reports/report21.htm dates] A number of references in this chapter relate to this rivalry. For example, on this page the English cricket ball is compared to the Australian "kookaburra". Kookaburra is the brand name of the balls used in Australia, in England it's Duke. The properties of the English ball was one of the keys to England's success in the summer of 2005. Was Pynchon's writing here influenced by the hype in the UK at the time?

'''Phosgene''' 
A poison gas used in World War I.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene Wikipedia]

'''logwood''' 
Source of red dye. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logwood Wikipedia]

'''exhiliration''' 
Misspelling of ''exhilaration.''

==Page 237==

'''beige substance''' 
Presumably Cyclomite.

'''Happy Birthday! . . . Gemini''' 
Ordinarily you would think this tagged the date as 21 May to 20 June [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_%28astrology%29 Wikipedia.] But other evidence in the text points to autumn.

'''get the Ashes back . . . next year''' 
On page 236 the Ashes (Test Matches, cricket competitions between England and Australia) are "in progress." At some time previous to this conversation Mme. Eskimoff said England will regain the trophy "next year" provided they use the young bowler Bosanquet (next entry).

Test Matches took place in (a) December 1901 to March 1902, Australia victorious; (b) May to August 1902, Australia again; (c) December 1903 to March 1904, England getting the Ashes back and Bosanquet figuring as a key bowler. When are we?

'''Bosanquet''' 
Another Ashes reference. [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/9158.html Bernard Bosanquet] invented the bosie (or googly), as described here, around 1900. A major factor in England's 2005 Ashes success was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_swing reverse swing], another type of delivery whose physical dynamics are poorly understood.

'''Pom''' 
A term for a British person commonly used in Australian English.

'''Hebrew letter Shin''' 
Obviously a nod to the Vulcan greeting in ''Star Trek'', with the distinctive hand sign and the phrase, "Live long and prosper." Perhaps also to the Jewish faith of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. See [http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/v-salute.html The Jewish origin of the Vulcan Salute]

Pynchon placed one of these in ''Mason & Dixon'', as well:

:Dixon discovers "The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter ''Shin'' and to signify, 'Live long and prosper.'( M&D 485) 
Might there be a further connection between The Cohen of T.W.I.T., the "Cohens of Paris" and these backwoods Kabbalists?

Also, note the hand on the devil tarot card above.

==Page 238==

'''Second Law of Thermodynamics''' 
The law of entropy... "The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Rudolf Clausius) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics]

There's no such thing as a perfectly efficient engine, i.e., a box that does work by taking in heat from where there is lots of heat (e.g., combustion chamber) and throwing off heat where there is not much (exhaust pipe). Something always gets lost. Similarly, the transfer of money from where there is plenty (bank) to where there isn't much (Europe) is never perfectly efficient.

"He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about something called entropy. The word bothered him... But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat engines, the other to do with communication... The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell's Demon. As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was offset by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where... Entropy is a figure of speech, then, a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow." ''The Crying of Lot 49'' (Pages 84 - 85)

'''''morsus fundamento''''' 
Latin: A bite on the ass?

The meaning is that he wouldn't know metaphysics if it bit him in the ass. Like "octogenarihexation" ("86"-ing) in Vineland--the vulgar faux fancied up.

'''three-percent consols''' 
British "consolidated" bonds, for many years the conservative investment ''par excellence.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consols wikipedia]

==Page 239==

'''mental''' 
Not mental as in "of the mind" but mental as in "mad". "You're mental, you are" is a common british playground taunt.

'''Colney Hatch''' 
London lunatic asylum. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colney_Hatch_Lunatic_Asylum Wikipedia]

'''Out of the dust . . . beam of morning sunlight''' 
I.e., sometimes your horse wins.

'''ENCYCLICAL''' 
An encyclical is a letter circulated by the pope or other figure of high authority in a body of believers. A comprehensive [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical Wikipedia article] explains and adds a list of papal encyclicals. An encyclical usually takes its first 2 or 3 words as its title (''Multi et Unus'' in this case).

Of course, the Vatican would strongly protest that McTaggart, an atheist, should send out an encyclical!

'''MCTAGGART . . . HARDY''' 
Seems to refer to a historical logician joke. [http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Science_Humor/1210.html explanation] Professor McTaggart was, perhaps, the most famous philosopher
who argued that Time did not exist as we seem to experience it.
W.H. Hardy was a very famous Cambridge mathematician who knew all the
famous philosophers in England. 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._E._McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis (J. M. E.) McTaggart] (1866-1925), British philosopher. He was born in London and educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured Philosophy at Trinity College from 1897 to 1923. His brilliant commentaries and studies on Hegel's dialectic (1896), cosmology (1901) and logic (1910) were preliminaries to his own constructive system-building in ''Nature of Existence'' (3 vols., 1921-1927). In his 1908 essay "The Unreality of Time" he argued that our perception of time is an illusion (Cf [[ATD_397-428#Page_412|page 412]]: dismissing . . . the ''existence'' of Time).

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hardy.html Godfrey Harold Hardy] (1877-1947), English mathematician. He was a lecturer at Cambridge (1906-1919), professor at Oxford (1919-31) and Cambridge (1931-47). Concurrently with Wilhelm Weinberg developed Hardy-Weinberg law (1906) describing genetic distribution and dequilibrium in large populations. He was also known for contributions to complex analysis, Diophantine analysis, Fourier series, distribution of prime numbers, etc.

'''''Multi et Unus''''' 
Many and One.

'''CREATE MORE DUKES''' and '''EXPROPRIATE CHUCKERS''' 
Is the grafitti in Cambridge another cricketing reference? Dukes are the balls used in England (cf. p236). Chucking (or bending the arm when bowling) is an emotive topic in cricket that arises from time to time. It first arose around 1900 [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/258016.html]. In 2005 it caused administrators to change the rules of the game [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/144358.html].

'''The Laplacian''' 
A bar in Cambridge.
::Are you saying it is a real establishment?

::Can't say it's a fact.

A ''Laplacian'' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplacian Wikipedia entry]) is a differential operator named after Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827), a famous French mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Wikipedia entry for Laplace]

:Yesyes, but is/was there a real public house named "The Laplacian"?

:Not during ''my'' stay in Cambridge (1998-2000). Also not today, according to [http://www.cambridgepubs.com/alphabetical/ this] list.

==Page 240==

'''Worse than Gordon at Khartoum''' 
Refers to Charles George Gordon, British Major-General, whose attempted defense of Khartoum versus Arabi rebels in 1884-85 ended with his beheading. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_George_Gordon Wikipedia] cf. Basil Dearden's 1966 film ''Khartoum'', in which the role of Gordon is played by Charlton Heston.

==Page 241==

'''"You recognize him?"''' 
As, presumably, Webb.
:How can that be? Webb is dead, there's nothing to suggest he went to England, the costume is not right for him, and—most tellingly—his medium is dynamite, not phosgene.
:Who might Lew recognize in the photo? The "suspects" are Neville, Nigel, the Grand Cohen, Dr. Coombs De Bottle, Clive Crouchmas and Professor Renfrew. If Prof. Werfner looks much like Prof. Renfrew, he goes on the list too. If the "Gentleman Bomber" is allowed to be possibly female, add Yashmeen and Mme. Eskimoff. We haven't met anyone else (except members of the Icosadyad, who don't have faces).
:Suppose we rule out the ladies and Werfner. Neville or Nigel wouldn't be able to hide their identities with a suit of white flannels. Renfrew is sitting right there when Lew sees the picture, but Lew's reaction (his stomach sinks) does not seem Lew-like if it's Renfrew he has recognized. The Cohen, De Bottle and Crouchmas are left.
:Would Lew experience dread on spotting Crouchmas? He doesn't know much about C.C. at this point, so it isn't clear why he would suppress that recognition.
:Seeing the Cohen might lead to this gastric reaction: Lew might think he's on the fringe of an anarchist group again (and look where it got him the last time). The Cohen stays on the list.
:Dr. De Bottle not only follows cricket but bets on it; he speaks almost with reverence about phosgene; he knows a nonobvious fact about the bombs; and he dresses like a gentleman. None of these points applies to the Cohen. And recognizing De Bottle would give Lew that sinking feeling because D.B. is purportedly fighting against bombers on behalf of the government.
:De Bottle goes to the top of the short list.

'''A bosie from a beamer''' 
More cricket! A bosie is now more commonly known as a googly (cf. p237). A beamer is a full-pitched delivery that reaches the batsman above waist height.

==Page 242==

[[Image:globenorth.gif|thumb|150px|The northern hemisphere]]

'''''unheimlich''''' 
German: uncanny, sinister.

 

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

Errata

2007-04-09T14:10:51Z

Gobbag: /* Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition */

The following list provides '''errata''' for ''[[Against the Day]],'' indicating places where readers have found misspellings, punctuation gaffes or other similar errors. Please note that some of these "mistakes" may be deliberate stylistic choices on the author's part.

== Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition ==

[[Against the Day description|Front flap]]: "Nikolai" Tesla, elsewhere (and conventionally) "Nikola"

Copyright page line 1: "VIKING" (should be "PENGUIN PRESS")

Copyright page line 16: "Viking Penguin" (should be "Penguin Press")

Page 63 line 14 "Unless," Ed pointed out, ["]it ''is'' God."

Page 82 line 1 "richochets"

Page 82 line 30 "Cour d'Alene"

Page 87 line 12 "be" doubled

Page 87 line 31-32 "ridegerunning"

Page 92 line 15 "what" doubled

Page 116 line 39 "de[c]lared"

Pae 236 line 10: "Headingly" (should be "Headingley")

Page 236 line 38: "exhiliration"

Page 240 line 8 "Re[n]frew"

Page 248 line 18: ''Culo'',[']"

Page 254 line 31 "recon[n]aissance"

Page 284 line 19: tartalan should be tarlatan

Page 307 line 14 how about that?["]

Page 334 line 19 "of" doubled

Page 348 line 1 "sixth" should be "Sixth"

Page 369 line 11 "guignette" should be "guinguette"

:Are you certain about this? [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 15:38, 4 April 2007 (PDT)

Page 374 line 20 "that" should be "than"

Page 375 line 10 "what is is" should be "what is"

Page 380 line 24 "Sergeant, Vasquez" should be "Sergeant Vasquez"

Page 385 line 34 "knowss"

Page 399 line 33-34 "were" should be "was" to agree with "band"

Page 409 line 17 "Wellesianism"

Page 420 line 28 "opportunit[i]es"

Page 427 line 7 "esssential"

Page 440 line 33 "sib[i]lance"

Page 444 line 8 "Oasi[s]" No typo. Oasi is Italian for Oasis

Page 490 line 16 "Phil[l]ippa"

Page 503 line 25 "The cycle, Yashmeen, speculated, might..."

Page 505 line 1 "momument"

Page 513 line 11 "smlled"

Page 515 line 32 "th[r]oughout"

Page 517 line 15 "''Haupthei[t]zer''" (In this and next 2 entries, consider the possibility that Pynchon used a contemporary source (1890s to 1910s) containing an archaic spelling with the '''tz.''')

Page 517 line 25 "Oberhaupthei[t]zer"

Page 519 line 16 "Oberhaupthei[t]zer"

Page 518 line 1 "off" for "of"

Page 522 line 17 "alimzah" should be "azlimzah"

Page 524 line 10 "exhilirated"

Page 531 Line 13 "rende[z]vous"

Page 548 line 24 "harbors," comma should be period

Page 552 line 10 "is, [is]"

Page 552 line 23 "be" doubled

Page 563 line 36 "''mo[d]erskont''" (?)

Page 590 line 29 That is, is it was ''some smile''.

Page 616 line 21 dueling transliterations: "Izmeren[i]ye"

Page 623 line 18 ''Verfluchte[r]''

Page 636 line 4 "f[r]om"

Page 652 line 12 "opportunit[i]es"

Page 680 line 10 "Colonnel"

Page 726 line 6 ''caorlina'' should be ''carolina''

Page 726 line 26 "Adam[s]

Page 766 line 25 "Rimpung" should be "Rinpung"

Page 778 line 1 "have [to] go"

Page 782 line 16 "when" doubled

Page 786 line 5 "th[r]ough"

Page 790 line 5-6 "interrested"

Page 790 line 24 "a[r]rival"

Page 799 line 4 "st[r]eet"

Page 801 line 12 "susceptib[i]lity"

Page 831 line 5 "ar[t]ificial"

Page 880 line 38 "Gradengio" for Gradenigo

Page 887 line 25 "endlessless" for endlessness

Page 896 line 37 "''Tallis'' Fantasia" [of Vaughan Williams]: misleading italics

Page 900 line 19 "the" doubled

Page 915 line 16 "perfo[r]ming"

Page 943 line 4 "Ou[t]side"

Page 943 line 36 "unfor[e]seen [variant, 'fore' used elsewhere]

Page 968 line 27 "every[b]ody"

Page 971 line 4 "were" doubled

Page 1000 line 14 final period omitted from L.A.H.D.I.H.D.A[]

Page 1034 line 7 "Thickbush" [vs. "Thick Bush" at 8.3]

Page 1036 line 36 "querelans" [vs. "querulans" at 455.16]

Page 1036 line 32 "'Dick' Counterfly" [vs. double quotation marks on pp. 1034–35, 1037–38]

Page 1037 line 29 "tran[s]parencies"

Page 1049 line 21 ""Roswell" for "Roswell"

Page 1071 line 35 "''Um''" for "''Un''"

Page 1074 line 26 "...Reef, Stray, and Ljubica returned..." should be Yashmeen, not Stray (Estrella)

Page 1087 ("ABOUT THE AUTHOR"): lists ''Mason '''and''' Dixon,'' rather than ''Mason '''&''' Dixon'' as given on the "Also by Thomas Pynchon" page in the front matter.

'''Back Flap:''' ''Mason '''and''' Dixon''
[[Category:ATD]]

ATD 219-242

2007-04-04T18:56:49Z

Gobbag: /* Page 232 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 219==

[[image:tetractys.png|thumb|175px|right|The Tetractys]]'''True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys''' 
The Tetractys is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, and nutbars of other affiliations since. It has all kinds of symbological meaning, including the four elements, the organization of space, the Tarot, etc. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys Wikipedia entry];

:In the Pythagorean tetractys the supreme symbol of universal forces and processes are set forth the theories of the Greeks concerning color and music. The first three dots represent the threefold White Light, which is the Godhead containing potentially all sound and color. The remaining seven dots are the colors of the spectrum and the notes of the musical scale. The colors and tones are the active creative powers which, emanating from the First Cause, establish the universe. The seven are divided into two groups, one containing three powers and the other four a relationship also shown in the tetractys. The higher group that of three becomes the spiritual nature of the created universe; the lower group that of four manifests as the irrational sphere, or inferior world. <ref>From [http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/ ''The Secret Teachings of All Ages''] by Manly P. Hall (1928)</ref>

:This division (three/four) has to be related to the "trivium" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and "quadrivium" (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) of the [http://www.cosmopolis.com/villa/liberal-arts.html Medieval liberal arts.]

More effably, if you flip the Tetractys left to right, it gives the positions of the pins in ten-pin bowling.

The acronym T.W.I.T is most appropriate: a twit is an ineffectual buffoon. Neville and Nigel are certainly twits.

I believe the above really misses the Big Symbol, i.e., Pynchon's linking of T.W.I.T. with the vagina, i.e., the female ''sex'' organ. "T.W.I.T." sounds like no, ''is'' a cross between "clit" and "twat." And, natch, it's headed up by [[#Page 220|Nookshaft]]. And, let's face it, that tetractys is surely an inverted beaver, yes? (See [[ATD 171-198#Page 183|"Beavers of the Brain"]]). Its male counterpart is [[ATD 397-428#Page 405|Candlebrow U.]], to be encountered down the road apiece (and that ain't no spoiler!).

'''Chunxton Crescent''' 
Invented by Pynchon. "Crescent" is a female symbol in many mythologies and cultures, and it reinforces T.W.I.T.'s association with the female sex. But "Chunxton"?

:The moon is seen as a female symbol, and was worshipped in ancient times as a powerful force. It is believed to be linked to the unconscious and our feminine side. The sacredness of the moon has been connected with the basic cyclic rhythms of life. The changing phases of the moon were linked to the death and rebirth seen in crops and the seasons, and also to the female monthly cycle that controls human fertility. The moon calendar is still important and many festivals exist around the lunar phases. [http://www.new-age.co.uk/moon-dates.htm]

''Chunxton'' may be derived from "chunk stone" or "chunk(s) town." I'm inclined to favor the first. "Chunk stone" has two main meanings: (1) stone that's quarried in chunks instead of blocks, slabs or crystals; (2) a magical stone that figures in some American Indian stories. Turquoise and amethyst chunk stones are often made into jewelry as-is, or [http://www.bridastone.com/chunkstone.htm larger chunks of (say) marble] can be used as decoration. Here are links to two Indian stories in which people use chunk stones in finding or tracking: [http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/se/mtsi/mtsi156.htm first,] [http://romeoandjuliet.ws/books/native_american/se/mtsi/mtsi270.shtml second.] Of course it's also possible that "chunk" is the verb meaning "throw," in which case there ought to be a "glass houses" connection somewhere; I can't find it.

'''Tyburnia''' 
"Tyburnia occupies the ground on the north side of Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens, and stretches from Edgware-road on the east to about Inverness-terrace on the west. This is not, strictly speaking, a fashionable quarter; but it is not absolutely unfashionable, and is a very favourite part with those — lawyers, merchants, and others—who have to reside in town the greater part of the year." Charles Dickens (Jr.), ''Dickens's Dictionary of London'', 1879.

'''Sir John Soane''' 
(1753 – 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Soane Wikipedia entry]

'''Madame Blavatsky''' 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Russian-born founder of the Theosophical Society. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and false or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Blavatsky Wikipedia]

'''century had rushed . . . out the other side''' 
An instant of zero, not a whole year, because they aren't yet "out the other side" of 1900. ??? A century is 100 years. The one referred to here lasted from 1800-1899 and, since it's 1900, it has "rushed to its end."
:Missing the point. The image focuses on the ''zero.'' And please, let's not have that sterile argument about when a century begins!

==Page 220==

'''not even if that tartan were authentic''' 
It's a solecism in England, but is (or was) a prosecutable offense in Scotland, to wear the tartan of a clan one doesn't belong to.

'''Caen stone''' 
A cream-colored limestone for building, found near Caen, France.

'''syrinx''' 
a primitive wind instrument consisting of several parallel pipes bound together; panpipes.

'''lyre''' 
an ancient form of harp, so syrinx and lyre are like flute and harp. A famous Concerto for flute and harp is the work of G. F. Handel, who also composed the ''Messiah.''

'''ten-in-one''' 
Ten sideshow acts for one admission. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow Wikipedia]

'''Nicholas Nookshaft''' 
Grand Cohen Nicholas Nookshaft's name reinforces the linking of [[#Page 219|T.W.I.T.]] to the female sex organ, "Nooky shaft" being a vulgarism for the vagina.

'''Grand Cohen''' 
'Cohen' is Hebrew for 'priest'.

==Page 221==

'''Couldn't have been the same world as the one you're in now''' 
Raising the possibility that Lew got blown up in one world and shifted to another.

'''"Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really."''' 
Could this be the explanation for some of the most inexplicable scenes from the book thus far: Lew Basnight's first encounter with the Drave group (around [[ATD_26-56#Page_39|page 39]]) and Hunter Penhallow's escape from the mysterious creature (around [[ATD_149-170#Pages_154-155|page 154]])? Parallel worlds?

''''Tzaddik'''' 
A righteous Jew. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadik Wikipedia]

==Page 222==

'''The Tetractys isn't the only thing round here that's ineffable''' 
Schoolyard joke. "F" a euphemism for fuck, so "ineffable" = unfuckable also describes Yashmeen.

'''Eighteenth Hussars''' 
Prestigious British cavalry regiment. Stationed in India 1864-76 and 1890-98; Halfcourt's secondment must have taken place at one of these times.

'''Simla''' 
British outpost in Himalayas. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimla Wikipedia]

'''Smartly taken at silly point''' 
A cricketing reference. Silly point is a fielding position very close to the batsman. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=smartly.taken+silly.point examples]

'''To know, to dare, to will, to keep silent''' 
Mystical formula. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=to.know.to.dare.to.will examples]
The four precepts of Western Magick, extensively discussed in the writings of Aleister Crowley.

'''In the States, "detective" doesn't mean—''' 
. . . An agent who solves criminal cases. The major "detective" bureaus hired personnel out as bodyguards and muscle.

'''"There is but one 'case' which occupies us"''' 
This echoes the famous quote from Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'': "The world is all that is the case." (See the full text of the ''Tractatus'' [http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html here].) This quote also factors in heavily in V. (Specifically, in two places: there's the [http://www.phil-reed.com/2006/02/14/the-love-songs-of-thomas-pynchon/ P's and Q's love song], and also in Captain Weissman's repeating, encoded, hallucinated message over the telegraph in Africa.)

'''The Number 22''' 
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really. 22 is the number of cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, the section of the deck that has been removed from the modern playing deck which only has the suits (elements) and the Court cards. The 22 Major Arcana are numbers 0 to 21 and move from The Fool card to the Universe. Purportedly and symbolically, the progression of cards tell a tale of the evolutionary path of the Soul in its course. The 22 cards also, in some systems, map onto the 22 paths that connect the spheres of the Kabalistic Tree of Life (which also is mentioned in this chapter). An understanding of the Tarot cards cannot be achieved with an understanding how they relate to the Tree of Life. They are the relationships between the Sephiroths which in turn at 10 in number, just like the Tetractys and portray the energies that flow from the highest monad of Divinity (Kether) down into the manifested world (Malkuth). Pynchon makes use of both the Tarot and the Kabalah in Against the Day as well as Gravity's Rainbow.

See also the novel ''The Greater Trumps'' by Charles Williams for a similar intrusion of the characters of the Major Arcana into everyday English life.

==Page 223==

'''"And the crime... just what would be the nature of that?"''' 
Might Lew himself be one of the 22 suspects? Perhaps the ineffable crime is what made people treat him like a pariah earlier in the book.

==Page 224==

'''"'walking out'"''' 
A walking date.

'''the veil of ''maya''''' 
In Hinduism, maya is the phenomenal world of separate objects and people, which creates for some the illusion that it is the only reality. In Hindu philosophy, maya is believed to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self. Many philosophies or religions seek to "pierce the veil" in order to glimpse the transcendent truth. Arthur Schopenhauer used the term "Veil of Maya" to describe his view of ''The World as Will and Representation''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion) Wikipedia entry]

'''the ancient London landscape . . . known to the Druids''' 
Peter Ackroyd's recent ''London, the Biography'' devotes many pages to sacred and magical features of the city. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid "Druid"].

'''Trumper's''' 
London's royal barbers since 1875. [http://www.trumpers.com/ site]

'''On this island [...] all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted''' 
A sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Pynchon's December 2006 letter written in defense of novelist Ian McEwan: "Given the British genius for coded utterance..." [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/06/nwriter06.xml Image of Letter]

'''crosswords in newspapers''' 
The first crossword to appear in a newspaper was in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossword#History 1913]. Cryptic crosswords in British newspapers certainly match Pynchon's description. See, for example, [http://www.crossword.org.uk/listen.htm the Listener crossword].

==Page 225==

'''Girton College''' 
For women, founded 1869. [http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/about/history/brief.html history]

'''Next they'll be letting you folks vote.''' 
Women were granted the right to vote in England in 1928.

'''"the vast jangling thronged somehow monumental London evening"''' 
This kind of eschewing of punctuation might be expected in Joyce but it's not typical of Pynchon and seems to serve no special purpose here. A typo?

'''Pamela Colman Smith''' 
Illustrator of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith "Wikipedia"].

'''Arthur Edward Waite''' 
Occultist and co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Waite Wikipedia]

'''four stone''' 
56 pounds.

'''Uckenfays''' 
Ucken-fay is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin "pig latin"] for 'fucken'.

'''''gaver du visage''''' 
A literal translation of "stuff one's face", though this is not how it is said in French (it would be se gaver or se baffrer). [http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/g/gaver.htm cite]

'''cigar-divan''' 
A smoking salon (divan) for cigar smokers.

Interestingly, a work by Robert Louis Stevenson, from 1903, entitled The Dynamiter begins with a "Prologue of the Cigar Divan".

==Page 226==

'''Seven Dials''' 
bad area in London, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dials Wikipedia entry]

[[image:tarotdevil.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Devil by Colman-Smith]]

'''growler''' 
Four-wheeled [http://www.bbno.freeserve.co.uk/glossary.htm carriage] drawn by four horses. Supplanted by the Hansom cab.

<div id="renfrew"></div>'''Renfrew at Cambridge and Werfner at Göttingen''' 
Note that each Professor's name is the other's spelled backward.

Also notice the theme of dual natures or forces. The two professors are "bound and ... could not separate even if they wanted to." They become rivals within the broader conflict of the 'Great Game' -- the political rivalry over Central Asia being played out by the various European powers, but especially by Great Britain and the Russian Empire.

[http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambuniv/index.html Cambridge University] is one of the oldest and the best universities in the world. In 2009 it will be celebrating its 800th Anniversary. In its early day, Cambridge was a center of the new learning of the Renaissance and of the theology of the Reformation; in modern times it has excelled in science. It is now a confederation of 31 Colleges (such as King's, Girton, St.John, Trinity and others mentioned in ATD), consists of over 100 departments and faculties, and other institutions. Since 1904, 81 affiliates of Cambridge have won Nobel Prize in every category: 29 in Physics, 22 in Medicine, 19 in Chemistry, 7 in Economics, 2 in Literature and 2 in Peace.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-August_University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen Göttingen University], one of the most famous universities in Europe, founded in Göttingen, Germany, in 1737 by King George II of England in his capacity as Elector of Hanover. At the end of the 19th century, it became world famous because of its Departments of Mathematics and Physics and rivaled Cambridge for eminence. The reputation of the university was founded by many eminent professors who are commemorated by statues and plaques all over the campus. It claimed 44 Nobel Laureates. But it suffered from the 1933 Great Purge of the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish Physics" and never recovered its original fame.

'''Berlin Conference of 1878''' 
Divided Balkans after Russo-Turkish War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin Wikipedia]

'''English, . . . , Japanese—not to mention indigenous—components''' 
''Not to mention'' them was exactly the point as the Great Powers sorted out the Ottoman possessions.

==Page 227==

'''"The Great Game"''' 
The Great Game was a term used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The term was later popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, ''Kim''. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia entry] Also the name of Padzhitnoff's airship.

'''mamluk lamps''' 
A [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/07/nfe/hob_17.190.985.htm mosque lamp]
from the [http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/mamluks.php mamluk] era.

'''...the Kabbalist Tree of Life, with the names of the Sephiroth spelled out in Hebrew, which had brought her more than enough of that uniquely snot-nosed British anti-Semitism... ''' 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] is the ancient study of Jewish mysticism, long shrouded in mystery and kept from all but a devout few of the most dedicated Talmudic scholars. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tree_of_Life_Medieval.jpg.jpg Tree of Life] is one of the central symbols of Kabbalah, supposedly a physical representation of the path of enlightenment from the most base knowledge of the physical world (at the bottom), to the highest spiritual planes of understanding (at the top). The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot Sephiroth] are the nodes of the Tree, representing the various "stages" of understanding. Of course, tihs is all a very gross oversimplifcation and hardly does justice to the term itself.

The "Quabbalah" or "Cabalah" being studied by Madonna and others in Hollywood is a secularized and co-opted form of the original Kabbalah, which is deeply connected to the Torah and Jewish life.

In Medieval Europe, Kabbalist scholars wore amulets and other symbols on their clothing, and were often misunderstood to be magicians or wizards (think Merlin). The common magician's expression "abra cadabra" has Kabbalistic origins.

'''"Eskimoff . . . I say what sort of name is that?"''' 
Tiptoeing around the real question, "Is she Jewish?"

'''English Rose''' 
The phrase "English Rose" or "Bonnie English Rose" when applied to a woman means her skin is unblemished, her coloring subtle, her temper sweet. Madame Eskimoff, in short, is a beauty in a traditional English style. 
(Incidentally, an officially unrecognized designation of [http://www.marinrose.org/englishroses.html roses].)

==Page 228==

'''Oliver Lodge''' 
English physicist, inventor and writer (1851-1940) involved in the development of wireless telegraphy and radio. After the death of his son in 1915, Lodge became interested in spiritualism and life after death and wrote several books on the subject. Lodge conducted research on lightning, electricity, electromagnetism and wrote about the aether, themes that are repeated throughout ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Joseph_Lodge Wikipedia entry].

'''William Crookes''' 
English chemist and physicist (1832-1919) who worked in spectroscopy and whose work pioneered the construction and use of vacuum tubes. Like Oliver Lodge, Crookes was also a spiritualist, which appears to be Pynchon's reason for grouping him with others in this passage, although his experiments in electricity and light also tie in with these themes in ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crookes Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Piper''' 
Probably [http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/piper.htm Leonora Piper] 1857-1950.

'''Eusapia Palladino''' 
(1854-1918) Famous italian spiritualist medium.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino Wikipedia entry]. It's fair to say she was often caught cheating.

'''W.T. Stead''' 
William T. Stead (1849-1912), British writer, poet, social crusader, and spiritualist. He went down with the ''Titanic.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Stead Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Burchell''' 
The Yorkshire Seeress, investigated by WT Stead. [http://www.wholeagain.com/prophecyfodor.html cite]

'''assassination''' 
Trouble with the time here. Lew's timeline points pretty strongly to autumn 1900. A séance that's "about to" go on Mme. Eskimoff's résumé, however, leads the murder of the Serbian king and queen by three months, and the murder itself occurred in June 1903, which seems to imply March of that year.

'''Alexander and Draga Obrenovich, the King and Queen of Serbia''' 
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Obrenovich Wikipedia] the assassination occured on 11 June 1903, so the seance at which Mrs. Burchell "witnessed" it, should have taken place in March 1903.

'''Parsons-Short Auxetophone''' 
[http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/auxetophone/auxetoph.htm pic and info]. The Auxetophone appears to have been a sound amplification device, not a recorder.

'''electros of the original wax impressions''' 
A thin film of metal was electroplated onto the wax, then peeled off and wrapped around a new cylinder.

==Page 229==

'''syntonic''' 
A term used in both engineering and psychology. Psychology: "Characterized by a high degree of emotional responsiveness to the environment." Electricity: "Of or relating to two oscillating circuits having the same resonant frequency."

'''the Russo-Turkish War''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War,_1877–1878 The Russo-Turkish War] (1877-1878), the latest Russo-Turkish War of many fought between these two contries since 16th century as a result of Russian attempts to find an outlet on the Black Sea and to conquer the Caucasus, dominate the Balkan Peninsula, gain control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, and retain access to world trade routes. The last Russo-Turkish War came as a result of the anti-Ottoman uprising (1875) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria. On Russian instigation, Serbia and Montenegro joined the rebels; after securing Austrian neutrality, Russia openly entered the War in 1877. The War ended in 1878 resulted in the Treaty of San Stefano which so thoroughly revised the map in favor of Russia and her client, Bulgaria, that the European powers called a conference (the Congress of Berlin) to revise its terms by the Treaty of Berlin.

==Page 230==

'''King's... Girton''' 
King's College is one of the most famous and historic colleges at Cambridge, founded in 1441. Girton College, Cambridge, was established in 1869 as the first residential college for women in England.

'''Michaelmas term''' 
The fall term, starting early October (1900 here). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaelmas_term Wikipedia]

'''tweeny''' 
A [http://www.bartleby.com/68/30/830.html between-maid].

'''Edward Oxford''' 
attempted to shoot Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, at the time of her first pregnancy (1840).[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Oxford Wikipedia]

'''had the young Queen died then without issue''' 
Nookshaft posits two scenarios: (1) The implicit, unmentioned, and not as "interesting" possibility that everything is actual, as it "appears" to be in the "real" world, surrounding Queen Victoria; that she is simply an old, vain regent. (2) "the 'real' Vic is elsewhere," and the current, aged Victoria is a ghostly stand-in. Nookshaft implies that this figure is a proxy or puppet of Ernst-August. If this were "the case," then the question shifts to the following: (a) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive in cahoots with Ernst-August in the "real" world? or: (b) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive NOT in cahoots with Ernst-August, who nevertheless ascends to the throne with real-Vic out of the way, and imposes the stand-in? In which case: What would be the motivation of the underworld-entity third-party? And who, or what, specifically, is it?

'''sixty years ago''' 
One event of 1840, the attempt on Victoria's life, is referred to as sixty years ago; another, the issue of the first adhesive stamps, as more than sixty years ago.

'''Salic law''' 
was a body of traditional law that codified policy on matters such as inheritance, crime, and murder. The British and Hanoverian thrones separated after the death of King William IV of the United Kingdom and of Hanover. Hanover practiced the Salic law, while Britain did not. King William's niece Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, but the throne of Hanover went to William's brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_Law Wikipedia entry]

'''Tory despotism''' 
Thatcher?
: Not necessarily-- it describes Ernest himself. "The Duke of Cumberland had a reputation as one of the least pleasant of the sons of George III. Politically an arch-reactionary, he opposed the 1828 Catholic Emancipation Bill proposed by the government of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Augustus_I_of_Hanover Wikipedia entry]

It can describe Ernst August and still be an allegory of Thatcher. The description of Ireland fits that of some world-views during her time.

'''Catholics''' 
Someone famously cited James Joyce as proof that Catholics shouldn't get university educations.

==Page 231==

'''Orange Lodges''' 
Lodges of the Orange Order, a protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly in Northern Ireland and Scotland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_lodge Wikipedia entry]

'''"from the first to the twelfth of July, anniversaries of the Boyne and Aughrim."''' 
i.e. anniversaries of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Boyne Battle of the Boyne] and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aughrim Battle of Aughrim] of the Williamite War in Ireland.

[[Image:pennyblack.jpg|thumb|100px|right|The first adhesive stamp, 1840]]
'''"the first adhesive stamps of 1840"''' 
This stamp has come to be called the Penny Black. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]

'''"immune to Time, [...] neither of them aging"''' 
Cf Oscar Wilde's only novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray], in which Dorian Gray remains young while his portrait ages.

'''springtide''' 
Cf Stray's pregnancy, a "dreamy thing" (page 201). The definition of springtide is springtime.

==Page 232==

'''Éliphaz Lévi''' 
A/K/A Eliphas Levi, ''nom de plume'' of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), French occultist and writer who pioneered a revival of Magick in the 19th Century, and was an influence on A.E. Waite, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley. An acquaintance of novelist Edward ("It was a dark and stormy night") Bulwer-Lytton. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliphas_Levi Wikipedia entry].

'''punters''' 
Punter is being used in the sense of someone who bets, someone who is taking a chance.
Or more probably in the common extended sense meaning merely "customer"

'''''akousmata''''' 
Greek: things heard. [[A|Good information under "A" in the alpha index.]]

'''number twenty-four''' 
Or 25? [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp11.htm etext]

'''Iamblichus''' 
(ca. 245 - ca. 325, Greek) was a neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichus_%28philosopher%29 Wikipedia]

'''maquillage''' 
French: makeup.

==Page 233==

'''Collis Brown's Mixture''' 
Contained morphine, chloroform, and caramel, among other things. [http://admin.safescript.com/drugcgic.cgi/DRUG?1006901319+0 Full ingredients]

'''xylene''' 
Xylene abuse is similar to "glue sniffing"-- xylene is a strong solvent able to cause several damages to health, especially to the brain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylene wikipedia]

'''a thousand pounds a year''' 
Over $100,000 today. [http://futureboy.homeip.net/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=1000&currency=pounds&fromYear=1900 cite]

'''"pinky"''' 
Condy's fluid is pink to purple. Methylated spirits is a kind of denatured alcohol: 95% ethyl alcohol, 5% methyl alcohol. "Pinky" would have a variety of effects, very possibly including blindness.

==Page 234==

'''Condy's fluid''' 
A disinfectant used to treat and prevent Scarlet Fever, among other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bollmann_Condy Wikipedia]

'''''tonight's the night''''' 
Considering the content here, probable reference to Neil Young's drug-addled album and its title song, "Tonight's The Night" from 1975. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonight%27s_the_Night_%28album%29 Wiki]

'''Cheapside''' 
an important market street in the City of London.

'''mews''' 
A street originally for stabling; but in modern times often converted into houses/apartments.

'''Coombs de Bottle''' 
"comes the bottle" ?

'''Russian duck''' 
Duck is strong, untwilled linen or cotton, lighter and finer than canvas. Russian duck is coarse, heavy and unbleached but softer than English duck.

==Page 235==

'''sensitive flames''' 
Cf GR p.29-32, 715.

'''extractors . . . distillation columns''' 
Separatory apparatus. An extractor works on differences in solubility, a distillation column differences in volatility.

'''tremblers and timers''' 
A trembler is a kind of motion detector used in both bombs and alarms; one kind has a flexible stem with a heavy contact on the free end so that disturbing the package it contains causes a trigger circuit to close. A timer uses a clocklike mechanism to bring two contacts together.

'''proper solvent procedures''' 
Famous 1960s "Anarchist Cookbook" was infamously inaccurate. [http://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-C-066-William-Powell/dp/0962303208 Amazon w/author's note]

==Page 236==

'''Breathless hush in the close tonight''' 
Dr. De Bottle quoting from Henry Newbolt's poem [[Vitai Lampada|"Vitaï Lampada,"]] which makes school games a metaphor and model for martial bravery.

'''The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly''' 
Cf Hornung's 'Gentleman Thief' and cricket player, Raffles. [http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/hardknox.shtml info]

Reminds me of the Krikkit Robots in Douglas Adams' ''Life, The Universe, and Everything,'' where a bomb is put in place of a Cricket Ball at a match between Britain and Australia. 

Here and elswhere the spelling of the cricket ground should be 'Headingley'.

'''The Ashes''' 
An international cricket series between England and Australia dating back to 1882. [http://www.334notout.com/ashes/reports/report21.htm dates] A number of references in this chapter relate to this rivalry. For example, on this page the English cricket ball is compared to the Australian "kookaburra". Kookaburra is the brand name of the balls used in Australia, in England it's Duke. The properties of the English ball was one of the keys to England's success in the summer of 2005. Was Pynchon's writing here influenced by the hype in the UK at the time?

'''Phosgene''' 
A poison gas used in World War I.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene Wikipedia]

'''logwood''' 
Source of red dye. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logwood Wikipedia]

'''exhiliration''' 
Misspelling of ''exhilaration.''

==Page 237==

'''beige substance''' 
Presumably Cyclomite.

'''Happy Birthday! . . . Gemini''' 
Ordinarily you would think this tagged the date as 21 May to 20 June [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_%28astrology%29 Wikipedia.] But other evidence in the text points to autumn.

'''get the Ashes back . . . next year''' 
On page 236 the Ashes (Test Matches, cricket competitions between England and Australia) are "in progress." At some time previous to this conversation Mme. Eskimoff said England will regain the trophy "next year" provided they use the young bowler Bosanquet (next entry).

Test Matches took place in (a) December 1901 to March 1902, Australia victorious; (b) May to August 1902, Australia again; (c) December 1903 to March 1904, England getting the Ashes back and Bosanquet figuring as a key bowler. When are we?

'''Bosanquet''' 
Another Ashes reference. [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/9158.html Bernard Bosanquet] invented the bosie (or googly), as described here, around 1900. A major factor in England's 2005 Ashes success was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_swing reverse swing], another type of delivery whose physical dynamics are poorly understood.

'''Pom''' 
A term for a British person commonly used in Australian English.

'''Hebrew letter Shin''' 
Obviously a nod to the Vulcan greeting in ''Star Trek'', with the distinctive hand sign and the phrase, "Live long and prosper." Perhaps also to the Jewish faith of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. See [http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/v-salute.html The Jewish origin of the Vulcan Salute]

Pynchon placed one of these in ''Mason & Dixon'', as well:

:Dixon discovers "The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter ''Shin'' and to signify, 'Live long and prosper.'( M&D 485) 
Might there be a further connection between The Cohen of T.W.I.T., the "Cohens of Paris" and these backwoods Kabbalists?

Also, note the hand on the devil tarot card above.

==Page 238==

'''Second Law of Thermodynamics''' 
The law of entropy... "The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Rudolf Clausius) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics]

There's no such thing as a perfectly efficient engine, i.e., a box that does work by taking in heat from where there is lots of heat (e.g., combustion chamber) and throwing off heat where there is not much (exhaust pipe). Something always gets lost. Similarly, the transfer of money from where there is plenty (bank) to where there isn't much (Europe) is never perfectly efficient.

"He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about something called entropy. The word bothered him... But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat engines, the other to do with communication... The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell's Demon. As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was offset by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where... Entropy is a figure of speech, then, a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow." ''The Crying of Lot 49'' (Pages 84 - 85)

'''''morsus fundamento''''' 
Latin: A bite on the ass?

The meaning is that he wouldn't know metaphysics if it bit him in the ass. Like "octogenarihexation" ("86"-ing) in Vineland--the vulgar faux fancied up.

'''three-percent consols''' 
British "consolidated" bonds, for many years the conservative investment ''par excellence.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consols wikipedia]

==Page 239==

'''Colney Hatch''' 
London lunatic asylum. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colney_Hatch_Lunatic_Asylum Wikipedia]

'''Out of the dust . . . beam of morning sunlight''' 
I.e., sometimes your horse wins.

'''ENCYCLICAL''' 
An encyclical is a letter circulated by the pope or other figure of high authority in a body of believers. A comprehensive [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical Wikipedia article] explains and adds a list of papal encyclicals. An encyclical usually takes its first 2 or 3 words as its title (''Multi et Unus'' in this case).

Of course, the Vatican would strongly protest that McTaggart, an atheist, should send out an encyclical!

'''MCTAGGART . . . HARDY''' 
Seems to refer to a historical logician joke. [http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Science_Humor/1210.html explanation] Professor McTaggart was, perhaps, the most famous philosopher
who argued that Time did not exist as we seem to experience it.
W.H. Hardy was a very famous Cambridge mathematician who knew all the
famous philosophers in England. 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._E._McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis (J. M. E.) McTaggart] (1866-1925), British philosopher. He was born in London and educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured Philosophy at Trinity College from 1897 to 1923. His brilliant commentaries and studies on Hegel's dialectic (1896), cosmology (1901) and logic (1910) were preliminaries to his own constructive system-building in ''Nature of Existence'' (3 vols., 1921-1927). In his 1908 essay "The Unreality of Time" he argued that our perception of time is an illusion (Cf [[ATD_397-428#Page_412|page 412]]: dismissing . . . the ''existence'' of Time).

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hardy.html Godfrey Harold Hardy] (1877-1947), English mathematician. He was a lecturer at Cambridge (1906-1919), professor at Oxford (1919-31) and Cambridge (1931-47). Concurrently with Wilhelm Weinberg developed Hardy-Weinberg law (1906) describing genetic distribution and dequilibrium in large populations. He was also known for contributions to complex analysis, Diophantine analysis, Fourier series, distribution of prime numbers, etc.

'''''Multi et Unus''''' 
Many and One.

'''CREATE MORE DUKES''' and '''EXPROPRIATE CHUCKERS''' 
Is the grafitti in Cambridge another cricketing reference? Dukes are the balls used in England (cf. p236). Chucking (or bending the arm when bowling) is an emotive topic in cricket that arises from time to time. It first arose around 1900 [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/258016.html]. In 2005 it caused administrators to change the rules of the game [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/144358.html].

'''The Laplacian''' 
A bar in Cambridge.
::Are you saying it is a real establishment?

::Can't say it's a fact.

A ''Laplacian'' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplacian Wikipedia entry]) is a differential operator named after Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827), a famous French mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Wikipedia entry for Laplace]

:Yesyes, but is/was there a real public house named "The Laplacian"?

:Not during ''my'' stay in Cambridge (1998-2000). Also not today, according to [http://www.cambridgepubs.com/alphabetical/ this] list.

==Page 240==

'''Worse than Gordon at Khartoum''' 
Refers to Charles George Gordon, British Major-General, whose attempted defense of Khartoum versus Arabi rebels in 1884-85 ended with his beheading. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_George_Gordon Wikipedia] cf. Basil Dearden's 1966 film ''Khartoum'', in which the role of Gordon is played by Charlton Heston.

==Page 241==

'''"You recognize him?"''' 
As, presumably, Webb.
:How can that be? Webb is dead, there's nothing to suggest he went to England, the costume is not right for him, and—most tellingly—his medium is dynamite, not phosgene.
:Who might Lew recognize in the photo? The "suspects" are Neville, Nigel, the Grand Cohen, Dr. Coombs De Bottle, Clive Crouchmas and Professor Renfrew. If Prof. Werfner looks much like Prof. Renfrew, he goes on the list too. If the "Gentleman Bomber" is allowed to be possibly female, add Yashmeen and Mme. Eskimoff. We haven't met anyone else (except members of the Icosadyad, who don't have faces).
:Suppose we rule out the ladies and Werfner. Neville or Nigel wouldn't be able to hide their identities with a suit of white flannels. Renfrew is sitting right there when Lew sees the picture, but Lew's reaction (his stomach sinks) does not seem Lew-like if it's Renfrew he has recognized. The Cohen, De Bottle and Crouchmas are left.
:Would Lew experience dread on spotting Crouchmas? He doesn't know much about C.C. at this point, so it isn't clear why he would suppress that recognition.
:Seeing the Cohen might lead to this gastric reaction: Lew might think he's on the fringe of an anarchist group again (and look where it got him the last time). The Cohen stays on the list.
:Dr. De Bottle not only follows cricket but bets on it; he speaks almost with reverence about phosgene; he knows a nonobvious fact about the bombs; and he dresses like a gentleman. None of these points applies to the Cohen. And recognizing De Bottle would give Lew that sinking feeling because D.B. is purportedly fighting against bombers on behalf of the government.
:De Bottle goes to the top of the short list.

'''A bosie from a beamer''' 
More cricket! A bosie is now more commonly known as a googly (cf. p237). A beamer is a full-pitched delivery that reaches the batsman above waist height.

==Page 242==

[[Image:globenorth.gif|thumb|150px|The northern hemisphere]]

'''''unheimlich''''' 
German: uncanny, sinister.

 

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 219-242

2007-04-04T18:49:40Z

Gobbag: /* Page 230 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 219==

[[image:tetractys.png|thumb|175px|right|The Tetractys]]'''True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys''' 
The Tetractys is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, and nutbars of other affiliations since. It has all kinds of symbological meaning, including the four elements, the organization of space, the Tarot, etc. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys Wikipedia entry];

:In the Pythagorean tetractys the supreme symbol of universal forces and processes are set forth the theories of the Greeks concerning color and music. The first three dots represent the threefold White Light, which is the Godhead containing potentially all sound and color. The remaining seven dots are the colors of the spectrum and the notes of the musical scale. The colors and tones are the active creative powers which, emanating from the First Cause, establish the universe. The seven are divided into two groups, one containing three powers and the other four a relationship also shown in the tetractys. The higher group that of three becomes the spiritual nature of the created universe; the lower group that of four manifests as the irrational sphere, or inferior world. <ref>From [http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/ ''The Secret Teachings of All Ages''] by Manly P. Hall (1928)</ref>

:This division (three/four) has to be related to the "trivium" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and "quadrivium" (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) of the [http://www.cosmopolis.com/villa/liberal-arts.html Medieval liberal arts.]

More effably, if you flip the Tetractys left to right, it gives the positions of the pins in ten-pin bowling.

The acronym T.W.I.T is most appropriate: a twit is an ineffectual buffoon. Neville and Nigel are certainly twits.

I believe the above really misses the Big Symbol, i.e., Pynchon's linking of T.W.I.T. with the vagina, i.e., the female ''sex'' organ. "T.W.I.T." sounds like no, ''is'' a cross between "clit" and "twat." And, natch, it's headed up by [[#Page 220|Nookshaft]]. And, let's face it, that tetractys is surely an inverted beaver, yes? (See [[ATD 171-198#Page 183|"Beavers of the Brain"]]). Its male counterpart is [[ATD 397-428#Page 405|Candlebrow U.]], to be encountered down the road apiece (and that ain't no spoiler!).

'''Chunxton Crescent''' 
Invented by Pynchon. "Crescent" is a female symbol in many mythologies and cultures, and it reinforces T.W.I.T.'s association with the female sex. But "Chunxton"?

:The moon is seen as a female symbol, and was worshipped in ancient times as a powerful force. It is believed to be linked to the unconscious and our feminine side. The sacredness of the moon has been connected with the basic cyclic rhythms of life. The changing phases of the moon were linked to the death and rebirth seen in crops and the seasons, and also to the female monthly cycle that controls human fertility. The moon calendar is still important and many festivals exist around the lunar phases. [http://www.new-age.co.uk/moon-dates.htm]

''Chunxton'' may be derived from "chunk stone" or "chunk(s) town." I'm inclined to favor the first. "Chunk stone" has two main meanings: (1) stone that's quarried in chunks instead of blocks, slabs or crystals; (2) a magical stone that figures in some American Indian stories. Turquoise and amethyst chunk stones are often made into jewelry as-is, or [http://www.bridastone.com/chunkstone.htm larger chunks of (say) marble] can be used as decoration. Here are links to two Indian stories in which people use chunk stones in finding or tracking: [http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/se/mtsi/mtsi156.htm first,] [http://romeoandjuliet.ws/books/native_american/se/mtsi/mtsi270.shtml second.] Of course it's also possible that "chunk" is the verb meaning "throw," in which case there ought to be a "glass houses" connection somewhere; I can't find it.

'''Tyburnia''' 
"Tyburnia occupies the ground on the north side of Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens, and stretches from Edgware-road on the east to about Inverness-terrace on the west. This is not, strictly speaking, a fashionable quarter; but it is not absolutely unfashionable, and is a very favourite part with those — lawyers, merchants, and others—who have to reside in town the greater part of the year." Charles Dickens (Jr.), ''Dickens's Dictionary of London'', 1879.

'''Sir John Soane''' 
(1753 – 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Soane Wikipedia entry]

'''Madame Blavatsky''' 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Russian-born founder of the Theosophical Society. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and false or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Blavatsky Wikipedia]

'''century had rushed . . . out the other side''' 
An instant of zero, not a whole year, because they aren't yet "out the other side" of 1900. ??? A century is 100 years. The one referred to here lasted from 1800-1899 and, since it's 1900, it has "rushed to its end."
:Missing the point. The image focuses on the ''zero.'' And please, let's not have that sterile argument about when a century begins!

==Page 220==

'''not even if that tartan were authentic''' 
It's a solecism in England, but is (or was) a prosecutable offense in Scotland, to wear the tartan of a clan one doesn't belong to.

'''Caen stone''' 
A cream-colored limestone for building, found near Caen, France.

'''syrinx''' 
a primitive wind instrument consisting of several parallel pipes bound together; panpipes.

'''lyre''' 
an ancient form of harp, so syrinx and lyre are like flute and harp. A famous Concerto for flute and harp is the work of G. F. Handel, who also composed the ''Messiah.''

'''ten-in-one''' 
Ten sideshow acts for one admission. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow Wikipedia]

'''Nicholas Nookshaft''' 
Grand Cohen Nicholas Nookshaft's name reinforces the linking of [[#Page 219|T.W.I.T.]] to the female sex organ, "Nooky shaft" being a vulgarism for the vagina.

'''Grand Cohen''' 
'Cohen' is Hebrew for 'priest'.

==Page 221==

'''Couldn't have been the same world as the one you're in now''' 
Raising the possibility that Lew got blown up in one world and shifted to another.

'''"Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really."''' 
Could this be the explanation for some of the most inexplicable scenes from the book thus far: Lew Basnight's first encounter with the Drave group (around [[ATD_26-56#Page_39|page 39]]) and Hunter Penhallow's escape from the mysterious creature (around [[ATD_149-170#Pages_154-155|page 154]])? Parallel worlds?

''''Tzaddik'''' 
A righteous Jew. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadik Wikipedia]

==Page 222==

'''The Tetractys isn't the only thing round here that's ineffable''' 
Schoolyard joke. "F" a euphemism for fuck, so "ineffable" = unfuckable also describes Yashmeen.

'''Eighteenth Hussars''' 
Prestigious British cavalry regiment. Stationed in India 1864-76 and 1890-98; Halfcourt's secondment must have taken place at one of these times.

'''Simla''' 
British outpost in Himalayas. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimla Wikipedia]

'''Smartly taken at silly point''' 
A cricketing reference. Silly point is a fielding position very close to the batsman. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=smartly.taken+silly.point examples]

'''To know, to dare, to will, to keep silent''' 
Mystical formula. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=to.know.to.dare.to.will examples]
The four precepts of Western Magick, extensively discussed in the writings of Aleister Crowley.

'''In the States, "detective" doesn't mean—''' 
. . . An agent who solves criminal cases. The major "detective" bureaus hired personnel out as bodyguards and muscle.

'''"There is but one 'case' which occupies us"''' 
This echoes the famous quote from Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'': "The world is all that is the case." (See the full text of the ''Tractatus'' [http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html here].) This quote also factors in heavily in V. (Specifically, in two places: there's the [http://www.phil-reed.com/2006/02/14/the-love-songs-of-thomas-pynchon/ P's and Q's love song], and also in Captain Weissman's repeating, encoded, hallucinated message over the telegraph in Africa.)

'''The Number 22''' 
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really. 22 is the number of cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, the section of the deck that has been removed from the modern playing deck which only has the suits (elements) and the Court cards. The 22 Major Arcana are numbers 0 to 21 and move from The Fool card to the Universe. Purportedly and symbolically, the progression of cards tell a tale of the evolutionary path of the Soul in its course. The 22 cards also, in some systems, map onto the 22 paths that connect the spheres of the Kabalistic Tree of Life (which also is mentioned in this chapter). An understanding of the Tarot cards cannot be achieved with an understanding how they relate to the Tree of Life. They are the relationships between the Sephiroths which in turn at 10 in number, just like the Tetractys and portray the energies that flow from the highest monad of Divinity (Kether) down into the manifested world (Malkuth). Pynchon makes use of both the Tarot and the Kabalah in Against the Day as well as Gravity's Rainbow.

See also the novel ''The Greater Trumps'' by Charles Williams for a similar intrusion of the characters of the Major Arcana into everyday English life.

==Page 223==

'''"And the crime... just what would be the nature of that?"''' 
Might Lew himself be one of the 22 suspects? Perhaps the ineffable crime is what made people treat him like a pariah earlier in the book.

==Page 224==

'''"'walking out'"''' 
A walking date.

'''the veil of ''maya''''' 
In Hinduism, maya is the phenomenal world of separate objects and people, which creates for some the illusion that it is the only reality. In Hindu philosophy, maya is believed to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self. Many philosophies or religions seek to "pierce the veil" in order to glimpse the transcendent truth. Arthur Schopenhauer used the term "Veil of Maya" to describe his view of ''The World as Will and Representation''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion) Wikipedia entry]

'''the ancient London landscape . . . known to the Druids''' 
Peter Ackroyd's recent ''London, the Biography'' devotes many pages to sacred and magical features of the city. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid "Druid"].

'''Trumper's''' 
London's royal barbers since 1875. [http://www.trumpers.com/ site]

'''On this island [...] all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted''' 
A sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Pynchon's December 2006 letter written in defense of novelist Ian McEwan: "Given the British genius for coded utterance..." [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/06/nwriter06.xml Image of Letter]

'''crosswords in newspapers''' 
The first crossword to appear in a newspaper was in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossword#History 1913]. Cryptic crosswords in British newspapers certainly match Pynchon's description. See, for example, [http://www.crossword.org.uk/listen.htm the Listener crossword].

==Page 225==

'''Girton College''' 
For women, founded 1869. [http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/about/history/brief.html history]

'''Next they'll be letting you folks vote.''' 
Women were granted the right to vote in England in 1928.

'''"the vast jangling thronged somehow monumental London evening"''' 
This kind of eschewing of punctuation might be expected in Joyce but it's not typical of Pynchon and seems to serve no special purpose here. A typo?

'''Pamela Colman Smith''' 
Illustrator of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith "Wikipedia"].

'''Arthur Edward Waite''' 
Occultist and co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Waite Wikipedia]

'''four stone''' 
56 pounds.

'''Uckenfays''' 
Ucken-fay is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin "pig latin"] for 'fucken'.

'''''gaver du visage''''' 
A literal translation of "stuff one's face", though this is not how it is said in French (it would be se gaver or se baffrer). [http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/g/gaver.htm cite]

'''cigar-divan''' 
A smoking salon (divan) for cigar smokers.

Interestingly, a work by Robert Louis Stevenson, from 1903, entitled The Dynamiter begins with a "Prologue of the Cigar Divan".

==Page 226==

'''Seven Dials''' 
bad area in London, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dials Wikipedia entry]

[[image:tarotdevil.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Devil by Colman-Smith]]

'''growler''' 
Four-wheeled [http://www.bbno.freeserve.co.uk/glossary.htm carriage] drawn by four horses. Supplanted by the Hansom cab.

<div id="renfrew"></div>'''Renfrew at Cambridge and Werfner at Göttingen''' 
Note that each Professor's name is the other's spelled backward.

Also notice the theme of dual natures or forces. The two professors are "bound and ... could not separate even if they wanted to." They become rivals within the broader conflict of the 'Great Game' -- the political rivalry over Central Asia being played out by the various European powers, but especially by Great Britain and the Russian Empire.

[http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambuniv/index.html Cambridge University] is one of the oldest and the best universities in the world. In 2009 it will be celebrating its 800th Anniversary. In its early day, Cambridge was a center of the new learning of the Renaissance and of the theology of the Reformation; in modern times it has excelled in science. It is now a confederation of 31 Colleges (such as King's, Girton, St.John, Trinity and others mentioned in ATD), consists of over 100 departments and faculties, and other institutions. Since 1904, 81 affiliates of Cambridge have won Nobel Prize in every category: 29 in Physics, 22 in Medicine, 19 in Chemistry, 7 in Economics, 2 in Literature and 2 in Peace.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-August_University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen Göttingen University], one of the most famous universities in Europe, founded in Göttingen, Germany, in 1737 by King George II of England in his capacity as Elector of Hanover. At the end of the 19th century, it became world famous because of its Departments of Mathematics and Physics and rivaled Cambridge for eminence. The reputation of the university was founded by many eminent professors who are commemorated by statues and plaques all over the campus. It claimed 44 Nobel Laureates. But it suffered from the 1933 Great Purge of the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish Physics" and never recovered its original fame.

'''Berlin Conference of 1878''' 
Divided Balkans after Russo-Turkish War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin Wikipedia]

'''English, . . . , Japanese—not to mention indigenous—components''' 
''Not to mention'' them was exactly the point as the Great Powers sorted out the Ottoman possessions.

==Page 227==

'''"The Great Game"''' 
The Great Game was a term used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The term was later popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, ''Kim''. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia entry] Also the name of Padzhitnoff's airship.

'''mamluk lamps''' 
A [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/07/nfe/hob_17.190.985.htm mosque lamp]
from the [http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/mamluks.php mamluk] era.

'''...the Kabbalist Tree of Life, with the names of the Sephiroth spelled out in Hebrew, which had brought her more than enough of that uniquely snot-nosed British anti-Semitism... ''' 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] is the ancient study of Jewish mysticism, long shrouded in mystery and kept from all but a devout few of the most dedicated Talmudic scholars. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tree_of_Life_Medieval.jpg.jpg Tree of Life] is one of the central symbols of Kabbalah, supposedly a physical representation of the path of enlightenment from the most base knowledge of the physical world (at the bottom), to the highest spiritual planes of understanding (at the top). The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot Sephiroth] are the nodes of the Tree, representing the various "stages" of understanding. Of course, tihs is all a very gross oversimplifcation and hardly does justice to the term itself.

The "Quabbalah" or "Cabalah" being studied by Madonna and others in Hollywood is a secularized and co-opted form of the original Kabbalah, which is deeply connected to the Torah and Jewish life.

In Medieval Europe, Kabbalist scholars wore amulets and other symbols on their clothing, and were often misunderstood to be magicians or wizards (think Merlin). The common magician's expression "abra cadabra" has Kabbalistic origins.

'''"Eskimoff . . . I say what sort of name is that?"''' 
Tiptoeing around the real question, "Is she Jewish?"

'''English Rose''' 
The phrase "English Rose" or "Bonnie English Rose" when applied to a woman means her skin is unblemished, her coloring subtle, her temper sweet. Madame Eskimoff, in short, is a beauty in a traditional English style. 
(Incidentally, an officially unrecognized designation of [http://www.marinrose.org/englishroses.html roses].)

==Page 228==

'''Oliver Lodge''' 
English physicist, inventor and writer (1851-1940) involved in the development of wireless telegraphy and radio. After the death of his son in 1915, Lodge became interested in spiritualism and life after death and wrote several books on the subject. Lodge conducted research on lightning, electricity, electromagnetism and wrote about the aether, themes that are repeated throughout ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Joseph_Lodge Wikipedia entry].

'''William Crookes''' 
English chemist and physicist (1832-1919) who worked in spectroscopy and whose work pioneered the construction and use of vacuum tubes. Like Oliver Lodge, Crookes was also a spiritualist, which appears to be Pynchon's reason for grouping him with others in this passage, although his experiments in electricity and light also tie in with these themes in ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crookes Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Piper''' 
Probably [http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/piper.htm Leonora Piper] 1857-1950.

'''Eusapia Palladino''' 
(1854-1918) Famous italian spiritualist medium.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino Wikipedia entry]. It's fair to say she was often caught cheating.

'''W.T. Stead''' 
William T. Stead (1849-1912), British writer, poet, social crusader, and spiritualist. He went down with the ''Titanic.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Stead Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Burchell''' 
The Yorkshire Seeress, investigated by WT Stead. [http://www.wholeagain.com/prophecyfodor.html cite]

'''assassination''' 
Trouble with the time here. Lew's timeline points pretty strongly to autumn 1900. A séance that's "about to" go on Mme. Eskimoff's résumé, however, leads the murder of the Serbian king and queen by three months, and the murder itself occurred in June 1903, which seems to imply March of that year.

'''Alexander and Draga Obrenovich, the King and Queen of Serbia''' 
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Obrenovich Wikipedia] the assassination occured on 11 June 1903, so the seance at which Mrs. Burchell "witnessed" it, should have taken place in March 1903.

'''Parsons-Short Auxetophone''' 
[http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/auxetophone/auxetoph.htm pic and info]. The Auxetophone appears to have been a sound amplification device, not a recorder.

'''electros of the original wax impressions''' 
A thin film of metal was electroplated onto the wax, then peeled off and wrapped around a new cylinder.

==Page 229==

'''syntonic''' 
A term used in both engineering and psychology. Psychology: "Characterized by a high degree of emotional responsiveness to the environment." Electricity: "Of or relating to two oscillating circuits having the same resonant frequency."

'''the Russo-Turkish War''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War,_1877–1878 The Russo-Turkish War] (1877-1878), the latest Russo-Turkish War of many fought between these two contries since 16th century as a result of Russian attempts to find an outlet on the Black Sea and to conquer the Caucasus, dominate the Balkan Peninsula, gain control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, and retain access to world trade routes. The last Russo-Turkish War came as a result of the anti-Ottoman uprising (1875) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria. On Russian instigation, Serbia and Montenegro joined the rebels; after securing Austrian neutrality, Russia openly entered the War in 1877. The War ended in 1878 resulted in the Treaty of San Stefano which so thoroughly revised the map in favor of Russia and her client, Bulgaria, that the European powers called a conference (the Congress of Berlin) to revise its terms by the Treaty of Berlin.

==Page 230==

'''King's... Girton''' 
King's College is one of the most famous and historic colleges at Cambridge, founded in 1441. Girton College, Cambridge, was established in 1869 as the first residential college for women in England.

'''Michaelmas term''' 
The fall term, starting early October (1900 here). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaelmas_term Wikipedia]

'''tweeny''' 
A [http://www.bartleby.com/68/30/830.html between-maid].

'''Edward Oxford''' 
attempted to shoot Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, at the time of her first pregnancy (1840).[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Oxford Wikipedia]

'''had the young Queen died then without issue''' 
Nookshaft posits two scenarios: (1) The implicit, unmentioned, and not as "interesting" possibility that everything is actual, as it "appears" to be in the "real" world, surrounding Queen Victoria; that she is simply an old, vain regent. (2) "the 'real' Vic is elsewhere," and the current, aged Victoria is a ghostly stand-in. Nookshaft implies that this figure is a proxy or puppet of Ernst-August. If this were "the case," then the question shifts to the following: (a) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive in cahoots with Ernst-August in the "real" world? or: (b) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive NOT in cahoots with Ernst-August, who nevertheless ascends to the throne with real-Vic out of the way, and imposes the stand-in? In which case: What would be the motivation of the underworld-entity third-party? And who, or what, specifically, is it?

'''sixty years ago''' 
One event of 1840, the attempt on Victoria's life, is referred to as sixty years ago; another, the issue of the first adhesive stamps, as more than sixty years ago.

'''Salic law''' 
was a body of traditional law that codified policy on matters such as inheritance, crime, and murder. The British and Hanoverian thrones separated after the death of King William IV of the United Kingdom and of Hanover. Hanover practiced the Salic law, while Britain did not. King William's niece Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, but the throne of Hanover went to William's brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_Law Wikipedia entry]

'''Tory despotism''' 
Thatcher?
: Not necessarily-- it describes Ernest himself. "The Duke of Cumberland had a reputation as one of the least pleasant of the sons of George III. Politically an arch-reactionary, he opposed the 1828 Catholic Emancipation Bill proposed by the government of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Augustus_I_of_Hanover Wikipedia entry]

It can describe Ernst August and still be an allegory of Thatcher. The description of Ireland fits that of some world-views during her time.

'''Catholics''' 
Someone famously cited James Joyce as proof that Catholics shouldn't get university educations.

==Page 231==

'''Orange Lodges''' 
Lodges of the Orange Order, a protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly in Northern Ireland and Scotland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_lodge Wikipedia entry]

'''"from the first to the twelfth of July, anniversaries of the Boyne and Aughrim."''' 
i.e. anniversaries of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Boyne Battle of the Boyne] and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aughrim Battle of Aughrim] of the Williamite War in Ireland.

[[Image:pennyblack.jpg|thumb|100px|right|The first adhesive stamp, 1840]]
'''"the first adhesive stamps of 1840"''' 
This stamp has come to be called the Penny Black. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]

'''"immune to Time, [...] neither of them aging"''' 
Cf Oscar Wilde's only novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray], in which Dorian Gray remains young while his portrait ages.

'''springtide''' 
Cf Stray's pregnancy, a "dreamy thing" (page 201). The definition of springtide is springtime.

==Page 232==

'''Éliphaz Lévi''' 
A/K/A Eliphas Levi, ''nom de plume'' of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), French occultist and writer who pioneered a revival of Magick in the 19th Century, and was an influence on A.E. Waite, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley. An acquaintance of novelist Edward ("It was a dark and stormy night") Bulwer-Lytton. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliphas_Levi Wikipedia entry].

'''punters''' 
Punter is being used in the sense of someone who bets, someone who is taking a chance.

'''''akousmata''''' 
Greek: things heard. [[A|Good information under "A" in the alpha index.]]

'''number twenty-four''' 
Or 25? [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp11.htm etext]

'''Iamblichus''' 
(ca. 245 - ca. 325, Greek) was a neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichus_%28philosopher%29 Wikipedia]

'''maquillage''' 
French: makeup.

==Page 233==

'''Collis Brown's Mixture''' 
Contained morphine, chloroform, and caramel, among other things. [http://admin.safescript.com/drugcgic.cgi/DRUG?1006901319+0 Full ingredients]

'''xylene''' 
Xylene abuse is similar to "glue sniffing"-- xylene is a strong solvent able to cause several damages to health, especially to the brain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylene wikipedia]

'''a thousand pounds a year''' 
Over $100,000 today. [http://futureboy.homeip.net/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=1000&currency=pounds&fromYear=1900 cite]

'''"pinky"''' 
Condy's fluid is pink to purple. Methylated spirits is a kind of denatured alcohol: 95% ethyl alcohol, 5% methyl alcohol. "Pinky" would have a variety of effects, very possibly including blindness.

==Page 234==

'''Condy's fluid''' 
A disinfectant used to treat and prevent Scarlet Fever, among other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bollmann_Condy Wikipedia]

'''''tonight's the night''''' 
Considering the content here, probable reference to Neil Young's drug-addled album and its title song, "Tonight's The Night" from 1975. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonight%27s_the_Night_%28album%29 Wiki]

'''Cheapside''' 
an important market street in the City of London.

'''mews''' 
A street originally for stabling; but in modern times often converted into houses/apartments.

'''Coombs de Bottle''' 
"comes the bottle" ?

'''Russian duck''' 
Duck is strong, untwilled linen or cotton, lighter and finer than canvas. Russian duck is coarse, heavy and unbleached but softer than English duck.

==Page 235==

'''sensitive flames''' 
Cf GR p.29-32, 715.

'''extractors . . . distillation columns''' 
Separatory apparatus. An extractor works on differences in solubility, a distillation column differences in volatility.

'''tremblers and timers''' 
A trembler is a kind of motion detector used in both bombs and alarms; one kind has a flexible stem with a heavy contact on the free end so that disturbing the package it contains causes a trigger circuit to close. A timer uses a clocklike mechanism to bring two contacts together.

'''proper solvent procedures''' 
Famous 1960s "Anarchist Cookbook" was infamously inaccurate. [http://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-C-066-William-Powell/dp/0962303208 Amazon w/author's note]

==Page 236==

'''Breathless hush in the close tonight''' 
Dr. De Bottle quoting from Henry Newbolt's poem [[Vitai Lampada|"Vitaï Lampada,"]] which makes school games a metaphor and model for martial bravery.

'''The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly''' 
Cf Hornung's 'Gentleman Thief' and cricket player, Raffles. [http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/hardknox.shtml info]

Reminds me of the Krikkit Robots in Douglas Adams' ''Life, The Universe, and Everything,'' where a bomb is put in place of a Cricket Ball at a match between Britain and Australia. 

Here and elswhere the spelling of the cricket ground should be 'Headingley'.

'''The Ashes''' 
An international cricket series between England and Australia dating back to 1882. [http://www.334notout.com/ashes/reports/report21.htm dates] A number of references in this chapter relate to this rivalry. For example, on this page the English cricket ball is compared to the Australian "kookaburra". Kookaburra is the brand name of the balls used in Australia, in England it's Duke. The properties of the English ball was one of the keys to England's success in the summer of 2005. Was Pynchon's writing here influenced by the hype in the UK at the time?

'''Phosgene''' 
A poison gas used in World War I.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene Wikipedia]

'''logwood''' 
Source of red dye. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logwood Wikipedia]

'''exhiliration''' 
Misspelling of ''exhilaration.''

==Page 237==

'''beige substance''' 
Presumably Cyclomite.

'''Happy Birthday! . . . Gemini''' 
Ordinarily you would think this tagged the date as 21 May to 20 June [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_%28astrology%29 Wikipedia.] But other evidence in the text points to autumn.

'''get the Ashes back . . . next year''' 
On page 236 the Ashes (Test Matches, cricket competitions between England and Australia) are "in progress." At some time previous to this conversation Mme. Eskimoff said England will regain the trophy "next year" provided they use the young bowler Bosanquet (next entry).

Test Matches took place in (a) December 1901 to March 1902, Australia victorious; (b) May to August 1902, Australia again; (c) December 1903 to March 1904, England getting the Ashes back and Bosanquet figuring as a key bowler. When are we?

'''Bosanquet''' 
Another Ashes reference. [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/9158.html Bernard Bosanquet] invented the bosie (or googly), as described here, around 1900. A major factor in England's 2005 Ashes success was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_swing reverse swing], another type of delivery whose physical dynamics are poorly understood.

'''Pom''' 
A term for a British person commonly used in Australian English.

'''Hebrew letter Shin''' 
Obviously a nod to the Vulcan greeting in ''Star Trek'', with the distinctive hand sign and the phrase, "Live long and prosper." Perhaps also to the Jewish faith of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. See [http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/v-salute.html The Jewish origin of the Vulcan Salute]

Pynchon placed one of these in ''Mason & Dixon'', as well:

:Dixon discovers "The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter ''Shin'' and to signify, 'Live long and prosper.'( M&D 485) 
Might there be a further connection between The Cohen of T.W.I.T., the "Cohens of Paris" and these backwoods Kabbalists?

Also, note the hand on the devil tarot card above.

==Page 238==

'''Second Law of Thermodynamics''' 
The law of entropy... "The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Rudolf Clausius) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics]

There's no such thing as a perfectly efficient engine, i.e., a box that does work by taking in heat from where there is lots of heat (e.g., combustion chamber) and throwing off heat where there is not much (exhaust pipe). Something always gets lost. Similarly, the transfer of money from where there is plenty (bank) to where there isn't much (Europe) is never perfectly efficient.

"He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about something called entropy. The word bothered him... But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat engines, the other to do with communication... The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell's Demon. As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was offset by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where... Entropy is a figure of speech, then, a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow." ''The Crying of Lot 49'' (Pages 84 - 85)

'''''morsus fundamento''''' 
Latin: A bite on the ass?

The meaning is that he wouldn't know metaphysics if it bit him in the ass. Like "octogenarihexation" ("86"-ing) in Vineland--the vulgar faux fancied up.

'''three-percent consols''' 
British "consolidated" bonds, for many years the conservative investment ''par excellence.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consols wikipedia]

==Page 239==

'''Colney Hatch''' 
London lunatic asylum. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colney_Hatch_Lunatic_Asylum Wikipedia]

'''Out of the dust . . . beam of morning sunlight''' 
I.e., sometimes your horse wins.

'''ENCYCLICAL''' 
An encyclical is a letter circulated by the pope or other figure of high authority in a body of believers. A comprehensive [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical Wikipedia article] explains and adds a list of papal encyclicals. An encyclical usually takes its first 2 or 3 words as its title (''Multi et Unus'' in this case).

Of course, the Vatican would strongly protest that McTaggart, an atheist, should send out an encyclical!

'''MCTAGGART . . . HARDY''' 
Seems to refer to a historical logician joke. [http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Science_Humor/1210.html explanation] Professor McTaggart was, perhaps, the most famous philosopher
who argued that Time did not exist as we seem to experience it.
W.H. Hardy was a very famous Cambridge mathematician who knew all the
famous philosophers in England. 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._E._McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis (J. M. E.) McTaggart] (1866-1925), British philosopher. He was born in London and educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured Philosophy at Trinity College from 1897 to 1923. His brilliant commentaries and studies on Hegel's dialectic (1896), cosmology (1901) and logic (1910) were preliminaries to his own constructive system-building in ''Nature of Existence'' (3 vols., 1921-1927). In his 1908 essay "The Unreality of Time" he argued that our perception of time is an illusion (Cf [[ATD_397-428#Page_412|page 412]]: dismissing . . . the ''existence'' of Time).

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hardy.html Godfrey Harold Hardy] (1877-1947), English mathematician. He was a lecturer at Cambridge (1906-1919), professor at Oxford (1919-31) and Cambridge (1931-47). Concurrently with Wilhelm Weinberg developed Hardy-Weinberg law (1906) describing genetic distribution and dequilibrium in large populations. He was also known for contributions to complex analysis, Diophantine analysis, Fourier series, distribution of prime numbers, etc.

'''''Multi et Unus''''' 
Many and One.

'''CREATE MORE DUKES''' and '''EXPROPRIATE CHUCKERS''' 
Is the grafitti in Cambridge another cricketing reference? Dukes are the balls used in England (cf. p236). Chucking (or bending the arm when bowling) is an emotive topic in cricket that arises from time to time. It first arose around 1900 [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/258016.html]. In 2005 it caused administrators to change the rules of the game [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/144358.html].

'''The Laplacian''' 
A bar in Cambridge.
::Are you saying it is a real establishment?

::Can't say it's a fact.

A ''Laplacian'' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplacian Wikipedia entry]) is a differential operator named after Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827), a famous French mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Wikipedia entry for Laplace]

:Yesyes, but is/was there a real public house named "The Laplacian"?

:Not during ''my'' stay in Cambridge (1998-2000). Also not today, according to [http://www.cambridgepubs.com/alphabetical/ this] list.

==Page 240==

'''Worse than Gordon at Khartoum''' 
Refers to Charles George Gordon, British Major-General, whose attempted defense of Khartoum versus Arabi rebels in 1884-85 ended with his beheading. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_George_Gordon Wikipedia] cf. Basil Dearden's 1966 film ''Khartoum'', in which the role of Gordon is played by Charlton Heston.

==Page 241==

'''"You recognize him?"''' 
As, presumably, Webb.
:How can that be? Webb is dead, there's nothing to suggest he went to England, the costume is not right for him, and—most tellingly—his medium is dynamite, not phosgene.
:Who might Lew recognize in the photo? The "suspects" are Neville, Nigel, the Grand Cohen, Dr. Coombs De Bottle, Clive Crouchmas and Professor Renfrew. If Prof. Werfner looks much like Prof. Renfrew, he goes on the list too. If the "Gentleman Bomber" is allowed to be possibly female, add Yashmeen and Mme. Eskimoff. We haven't met anyone else (except members of the Icosadyad, who don't have faces).
:Suppose we rule out the ladies and Werfner. Neville or Nigel wouldn't be able to hide their identities with a suit of white flannels. Renfrew is sitting right there when Lew sees the picture, but Lew's reaction (his stomach sinks) does not seem Lew-like if it's Renfrew he has recognized. The Cohen, De Bottle and Crouchmas are left.
:Would Lew experience dread on spotting Crouchmas? He doesn't know much about C.C. at this point, so it isn't clear why he would suppress that recognition.
:Seeing the Cohen might lead to this gastric reaction: Lew might think he's on the fringe of an anarchist group again (and look where it got him the last time). The Cohen stays on the list.
:Dr. De Bottle not only follows cricket but bets on it; he speaks almost with reverence about phosgene; he knows a nonobvious fact about the bombs; and he dresses like a gentleman. None of these points applies to the Cohen. And recognizing De Bottle would give Lew that sinking feeling because D.B. is purportedly fighting against bombers on behalf of the government.
:De Bottle goes to the top of the short list.

'''A bosie from a beamer''' 
More cricket! A bosie is now more commonly known as a googly (cf. p237). A beamer is a full-pitched delivery that reaches the batsman above waist height.

==Page 242==

[[Image:globenorth.gif|thumb|150px|The northern hemisphere]]

'''''unheimlich''''' 
German: uncanny, sinister.

 

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 219-242

2007-04-04T18:01:28Z

Gobbag: /* Page 228 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 219==

[[image:tetractys.png|thumb|175px|right|The Tetractys]]'''True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys''' 
The Tetractys is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, and nutbars of other affiliations since. It has all kinds of symbological meaning, including the four elements, the organization of space, the Tarot, etc. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys Wikipedia entry];

:In the Pythagorean tetractys the supreme symbol of universal forces and processes are set forth the theories of the Greeks concerning color and music. The first three dots represent the threefold White Light, which is the Godhead containing potentially all sound and color. The remaining seven dots are the colors of the spectrum and the notes of the musical scale. The colors and tones are the active creative powers which, emanating from the First Cause, establish the universe. The seven are divided into two groups, one containing three powers and the other four a relationship also shown in the tetractys. The higher group that of three becomes the spiritual nature of the created universe; the lower group that of four manifests as the irrational sphere, or inferior world. <ref>From [http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/ ''The Secret Teachings of All Ages''] by Manly P. Hall (1928)</ref>

:This division (three/four) has to be related to the "trivium" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and "quadrivium" (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) of the [http://www.cosmopolis.com/villa/liberal-arts.html Medieval liberal arts.]

More effably, if you flip the Tetractys left to right, it gives the positions of the pins in ten-pin bowling.

The acronym T.W.I.T is most appropriate: a twit is an ineffectual buffoon. Neville and Nigel are certainly twits.

I believe the above really misses the Big Symbol, i.e., Pynchon's linking of T.W.I.T. with the vagina, i.e., the female ''sex'' organ. "T.W.I.T." sounds like no, ''is'' a cross between "clit" and "twat." And, natch, it's headed up by [[#Page 220|Nookshaft]]. And, let's face it, that tetractys is surely an inverted beaver, yes? (See [[ATD 171-198#Page 183|"Beavers of the Brain"]]). Its male counterpart is [[ATD 397-428#Page 405|Candlebrow U.]], to be encountered down the road apiece (and that ain't no spoiler!).

'''Chunxton Crescent''' 
Invented by Pynchon. "Crescent" is a female symbol in many mythologies and cultures, and it reinforces T.W.I.T.'s association with the female sex. But "Chunxton"?

:The moon is seen as a female symbol, and was worshipped in ancient times as a powerful force. It is believed to be linked to the unconscious and our feminine side. The sacredness of the moon has been connected with the basic cyclic rhythms of life. The changing phases of the moon were linked to the death and rebirth seen in crops and the seasons, and also to the female monthly cycle that controls human fertility. The moon calendar is still important and many festivals exist around the lunar phases. [http://www.new-age.co.uk/moon-dates.htm]

''Chunxton'' may be derived from "chunk stone" or "chunk(s) town." I'm inclined to favor the first. "Chunk stone" has two main meanings: (1) stone that's quarried in chunks instead of blocks, slabs or crystals; (2) a magical stone that figures in some American Indian stories. Turquoise and amethyst chunk stones are often made into jewelry as-is, or [http://www.bridastone.com/chunkstone.htm larger chunks of (say) marble] can be used as decoration. Here are links to two Indian stories in which people use chunk stones in finding or tracking: [http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/se/mtsi/mtsi156.htm first,] [http://romeoandjuliet.ws/books/native_american/se/mtsi/mtsi270.shtml second.] Of course it's also possible that "chunk" is the verb meaning "throw," in which case there ought to be a "glass houses" connection somewhere; I can't find it.

'''Tyburnia''' 
"Tyburnia occupies the ground on the north side of Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens, and stretches from Edgware-road on the east to about Inverness-terrace on the west. This is not, strictly speaking, a fashionable quarter; but it is not absolutely unfashionable, and is a very favourite part with those — lawyers, merchants, and others—who have to reside in town the greater part of the year." Charles Dickens (Jr.), ''Dickens's Dictionary of London'', 1879.

'''Sir John Soane''' 
(1753 – 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Soane Wikipedia entry]

'''Madame Blavatsky''' 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Russian-born founder of the Theosophical Society. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and false or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Blavatsky Wikipedia]

'''century had rushed . . . out the other side''' 
An instant of zero, not a whole year, because they aren't yet "out the other side" of 1900. ??? A century is 100 years. The one referred to here lasted from 1800-1899 and, since it's 1900, it has "rushed to its end."
:Missing the point. The image focuses on the ''zero.'' And please, let's not have that sterile argument about when a century begins!

==Page 220==

'''not even if that tartan were authentic''' 
It's a solecism in England, but is (or was) a prosecutable offense in Scotland, to wear the tartan of a clan one doesn't belong to.

'''Caen stone''' 
A cream-colored limestone for building, found near Caen, France.

'''syrinx''' 
a primitive wind instrument consisting of several parallel pipes bound together; panpipes.

'''lyre''' 
an ancient form of harp, so syrinx and lyre are like flute and harp. A famous Concerto for flute and harp is the work of G. F. Handel, who also composed the ''Messiah.''

'''ten-in-one''' 
Ten sideshow acts for one admission. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow Wikipedia]

'''Nicholas Nookshaft''' 
Grand Cohen Nicholas Nookshaft's name reinforces the linking of [[#Page 219|T.W.I.T.]] to the female sex organ, "Nooky shaft" being a vulgarism for the vagina.

'''Grand Cohen''' 
'Cohen' is Hebrew for 'priest'.

==Page 221==

'''Couldn't have been the same world as the one you're in now''' 
Raising the possibility that Lew got blown up in one world and shifted to another.

'''"Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really."''' 
Could this be the explanation for some of the most inexplicable scenes from the book thus far: Lew Basnight's first encounter with the Drave group (around [[ATD_26-56#Page_39|page 39]]) and Hunter Penhallow's escape from the mysterious creature (around [[ATD_149-170#Pages_154-155|page 154]])? Parallel worlds?

''''Tzaddik'''' 
A righteous Jew. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadik Wikipedia]

==Page 222==

'''The Tetractys isn't the only thing round here that's ineffable''' 
Schoolyard joke. "F" a euphemism for fuck, so "ineffable" = unfuckable also describes Yashmeen.

'''Eighteenth Hussars''' 
Prestigious British cavalry regiment. Stationed in India 1864-76 and 1890-98; Halfcourt's secondment must have taken place at one of these times.

'''Simla''' 
British outpost in Himalayas. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimla Wikipedia]

'''Smartly taken at silly point''' 
A cricketing reference. Silly point is a fielding position very close to the batsman. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=smartly.taken+silly.point examples]

'''To know, to dare, to will, to keep silent''' 
Mystical formula. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=to.know.to.dare.to.will examples]
The four precepts of Western Magick, extensively discussed in the writings of Aleister Crowley.

'''In the States, "detective" doesn't mean—''' 
. . . An agent who solves criminal cases. The major "detective" bureaus hired personnel out as bodyguards and muscle.

'''"There is but one 'case' which occupies us"''' 
This echoes the famous quote from Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'': "The world is all that is the case." (See the full text of the ''Tractatus'' [http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html here].) This quote also factors in heavily in V. (Specifically, in two places: there's the [http://www.phil-reed.com/2006/02/14/the-love-songs-of-thomas-pynchon/ P's and Q's love song], and also in Captain Weissman's repeating, encoded, hallucinated message over the telegraph in Africa.)

'''The Number 22''' 
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really. 22 is the number of cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, the section of the deck that has been removed from the modern playing deck which only has the suits (elements) and the Court cards. The 22 Major Arcana are numbers 0 to 21 and move from The Fool card to the Universe. Purportedly and symbolically, the progression of cards tell a tale of the evolutionary path of the Soul in its course. The 22 cards also, in some systems, map onto the 22 paths that connect the spheres of the Kabalistic Tree of Life (which also is mentioned in this chapter). An understanding of the Tarot cards cannot be achieved with an understanding how they relate to the Tree of Life. They are the relationships between the Sephiroths which in turn at 10 in number, just like the Tetractys and portray the energies that flow from the highest monad of Divinity (Kether) down into the manifested world (Malkuth). Pynchon makes use of both the Tarot and the Kabalah in Against the Day as well as Gravity's Rainbow.

See also the novel ''The Greater Trumps'' by Charles Williams for a similar intrusion of the characters of the Major Arcana into everyday English life.

==Page 223==

'''"And the crime... just what would be the nature of that?"''' 
Might Lew himself be one of the 22 suspects? Perhaps the ineffable crime is what made people treat him like a pariah earlier in the book.

==Page 224==

'''"'walking out'"''' 
A walking date.

'''the veil of ''maya''''' 
In Hinduism, maya is the phenomenal world of separate objects and people, which creates for some the illusion that it is the only reality. In Hindu philosophy, maya is believed to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self. Many philosophies or religions seek to "pierce the veil" in order to glimpse the transcendent truth. Arthur Schopenhauer used the term "Veil of Maya" to describe his view of ''The World as Will and Representation''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion) Wikipedia entry]

'''the ancient London landscape . . . known to the Druids''' 
Peter Ackroyd's recent ''London, the Biography'' devotes many pages to sacred and magical features of the city. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid "Druid"].

'''Trumper's''' 
London's royal barbers since 1875. [http://www.trumpers.com/ site]

'''On this island [...] all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted''' 
A sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Pynchon's December 2006 letter written in defense of novelist Ian McEwan: "Given the British genius for coded utterance..." [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/06/nwriter06.xml Image of Letter]

'''crosswords in newspapers''' 
The first crossword to appear in a newspaper was in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossword#History 1913]. Cryptic crosswords in British newspapers certainly match Pynchon's description. See, for example, [http://www.crossword.org.uk/listen.htm the Listener crossword].

==Page 225==

'''Girton College''' 
For women, founded 1869. [http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/about/history/brief.html history]

'''Next they'll be letting you folks vote.''' 
Women were granted the right to vote in England in 1928.

'''"the vast jangling thronged somehow monumental London evening"''' 
This kind of eschewing of punctuation might be expected in Joyce but it's not typical of Pynchon and seems to serve no special purpose here. A typo?

'''Pamela Colman Smith''' 
Illustrator of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith "Wikipedia"].

'''Arthur Edward Waite''' 
Occultist and co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Waite Wikipedia]

'''four stone''' 
56 pounds.

'''Uckenfays''' 
Ucken-fay is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin "pig latin"] for 'fucken'.

'''''gaver du visage''''' 
A literal translation of "stuff one's face", though this is not how it is said in French (it would be se gaver or se baffrer). [http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/g/gaver.htm cite]

'''cigar-divan''' 
A smoking salon (divan) for cigar smokers.

Interestingly, a work by Robert Louis Stevenson, from 1903, entitled The Dynamiter begins with a "Prologue of the Cigar Divan".

==Page 226==

'''Seven Dials''' 
bad area in London, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dials Wikipedia entry]

[[image:tarotdevil.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Devil by Colman-Smith]]

'''growler''' 
Four-wheeled [http://www.bbno.freeserve.co.uk/glossary.htm carriage] drawn by four horses. Supplanted by the Hansom cab.

<div id="renfrew"></div>'''Renfrew at Cambridge and Werfner at Göttingen''' 
Note that each Professor's name is the other's spelled backward.

Also notice the theme of dual natures or forces. The two professors are "bound and ... could not separate even if they wanted to." They become rivals within the broader conflict of the 'Great Game' -- the political rivalry over Central Asia being played out by the various European powers, but especially by Great Britain and the Russian Empire.

[http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambuniv/index.html Cambridge University] is one of the oldest and the best universities in the world. In 2009 it will be celebrating its 800th Anniversary. In its early day, Cambridge was a center of the new learning of the Renaissance and of the theology of the Reformation; in modern times it has excelled in science. It is now a confederation of 31 Colleges (such as King's, Girton, St.John, Trinity and others mentioned in ATD), consists of over 100 departments and faculties, and other institutions. Since 1904, 81 affiliates of Cambridge have won Nobel Prize in every category: 29 in Physics, 22 in Medicine, 19 in Chemistry, 7 in Economics, 2 in Literature and 2 in Peace.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-August_University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen Göttingen University], one of the most famous universities in Europe, founded in Göttingen, Germany, in 1737 by King George II of England in his capacity as Elector of Hanover. At the end of the 19th century, it became world famous because of its Departments of Mathematics and Physics and rivaled Cambridge for eminence. The reputation of the university was founded by many eminent professors who are commemorated by statues and plaques all over the campus. It claimed 44 Nobel Laureates. But it suffered from the 1933 Great Purge of the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish Physics" and never recovered its original fame.

'''Berlin Conference of 1878''' 
Divided Balkans after Russo-Turkish War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin Wikipedia]

'''English, . . . , Japanese—not to mention indigenous—components''' 
''Not to mention'' them was exactly the point as the Great Powers sorted out the Ottoman possessions.

==Page 227==

'''"The Great Game"''' 
The Great Game was a term used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The term was later popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, ''Kim''. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia entry] Also the name of Padzhitnoff's airship.

'''mamluk lamps''' 
A [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/07/nfe/hob_17.190.985.htm mosque lamp]
from the [http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/mamluks.php mamluk] era.

'''...the Kabbalist Tree of Life, with the names of the Sephiroth spelled out in Hebrew, which had brought her more than enough of that uniquely snot-nosed British anti-Semitism... ''' 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] is the ancient study of Jewish mysticism, long shrouded in mystery and kept from all but a devout few of the most dedicated Talmudic scholars. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tree_of_Life_Medieval.jpg.jpg Tree of Life] is one of the central symbols of Kabbalah, supposedly a physical representation of the path of enlightenment from the most base knowledge of the physical world (at the bottom), to the highest spiritual planes of understanding (at the top). The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot Sephiroth] are the nodes of the Tree, representing the various "stages" of understanding. Of course, tihs is all a very gross oversimplifcation and hardly does justice to the term itself.

The "Quabbalah" or "Cabalah" being studied by Madonna and others in Hollywood is a secularized and co-opted form of the original Kabbalah, which is deeply connected to the Torah and Jewish life.

In Medieval Europe, Kabbalist scholars wore amulets and other symbols on their clothing, and were often misunderstood to be magicians or wizards (think Merlin). The common magician's expression "abra cadabra" has Kabbalistic origins.

'''"Eskimoff . . . I say what sort of name is that?"''' 
Tiptoeing around the real question, "Is she Jewish?"

'''English Rose''' 
The phrase "English Rose" or "Bonnie English Rose" when applied to a woman means her skin is unblemished, her coloring subtle, her temper sweet. Madame Eskimoff, in short, is a beauty in a traditional English style. 
(Incidentally, an officially unrecognized designation of [http://www.marinrose.org/englishroses.html roses].)

==Page 228==

'''Oliver Lodge''' 
English physicist, inventor and writer (1851-1940) involved in the development of wireless telegraphy and radio. After the death of his son in 1915, Lodge became interested in spiritualism and life after death and wrote several books on the subject. Lodge conducted research on lightning, electricity, electromagnetism and wrote about the aether, themes that are repeated throughout ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Joseph_Lodge Wikipedia entry].

'''William Crookes''' 
English chemist and physicist (1832-1919) who worked in spectroscopy and whose work pioneered the construction and use of vacuum tubes. Like Oliver Lodge, Crookes was also a spiritualist, which appears to be Pynchon's reason for grouping him with others in this passage, although his experiments in electricity and light also tie in with these themes in ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crookes Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Piper''' 
Probably [http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/piper.htm Leonora Piper] 1857-1950.

'''Eusapia Palladino''' 
(1854-1918) Famous italian spiritualist medium.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino Wikipedia entry]. It's fair to say she was often caught cheating.

'''W.T. Stead''' 
William T. Stead (1849-1912), British writer, poet, social crusader, and spiritualist. He went down with the ''Titanic.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Stead Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Burchell''' 
The Yorkshire Seeress, investigated by WT Stead. [http://www.wholeagain.com/prophecyfodor.html cite]

'''assassination''' 
Trouble with the time here. Lew's timeline points pretty strongly to autumn 1900. A séance that's "about to" go on Mme. Eskimoff's résumé, however, leads the murder of the Serbian king and queen by three months, and the murder itself occurred in June 1903, which seems to imply March of that year.

'''Alexander and Draga Obrenovich, the King and Queen of Serbia''' 
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Obrenovich Wikipedia] the assassination occured on 11 June 1903, so the seance at which Mrs. Burchell "witnessed" it, should have taken place in March 1903.

'''Parsons-Short Auxetophone''' 
[http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/auxetophone/auxetoph.htm pic and info]. The Auxetophone appears to have been a sound amplification device, not a recorder.

'''electros of the original wax impressions''' 
A thin film of metal was electroplated onto the wax, then peeled off and wrapped around a new cylinder.

==Page 229==

'''syntonic''' 
A term used in both engineering and psychology. Psychology: "Characterized by a high degree of emotional responsiveness to the environment." Electricity: "Of or relating to two oscillating circuits having the same resonant frequency."

'''the Russo-Turkish War''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War,_1877–1878 The Russo-Turkish War] (1877-1878), the latest Russo-Turkish War of many fought between these two contries since 16th century as a result of Russian attempts to find an outlet on the Black Sea and to conquer the Caucasus, dominate the Balkan Peninsula, gain control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, and retain access to world trade routes. The last Russo-Turkish War came as a result of the anti-Ottoman uprising (1875) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria. On Russian instigation, Serbia and Montenegro joined the rebels; after securing Austrian neutrality, Russia openly entered the War in 1877. The War ended in 1878 resulted in the Treaty of San Stefano which so thoroughly revised the map in favor of Russia and her client, Bulgaria, that the European powers called a conference (the Congress of Berlin) to revise its terms by the Treaty of Berlin.

==Page 230==

'''King's... Girton''' 
King's College is one of the most famous and historic colleges at Cambridge, founded in 1441. Girton College, Cambridge, was established in 1869 as the first residential college for women in England.

'''Michaelmas term''' 
The fall term, starting early October (1900 here). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaelmas_term Wikipedia]

'''tweeny''' 
A [http://www.bartleby.com/68/30/830.html between-maid].

'''Edward Oxford''' 
attempted to shoot Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, at the time of her first pregnancy (1840).[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Oxford Wikipedia]

'''had the young Queen died then without issue''' 
Nookshaft posits two scenarios: (1) The implicit, unmentioned, and not as "interesting" possibility that everything is actual, as it "appears" to be in the "real" world, surrounding Queen Victoria; that she is simply an old, vain regent. (2) "the 'real' Vic is elsewhere," and the current, aged Victoria is a ghostly stand-in. Nookshaft implies that this figure is a proxy or puppet of Ernst-August. If this were "the case," then the question shifts to the following: (a) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive in cahoots with Ernst-August in the "real" world? or: (b) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive NOT in cahoots with Ernst-August, who nevertheless ascends to the throne with real-Vic out of the way, and imposes the stand-in? In which case: What would be the motivation of the underworld-entity third-party? And who, or what, specifically, is it?

'''sixty years ago''' 
One event of 1840, the attempt on Victoria's life, is referred to as sixty years ago; another, the issue of the first adhesive stamps, as more than sixty years ago.

'''Salic law''' 
was a body of traditional law that codified policy on matters such as inheritance, crime, and murder. The British and Hanoverian thrones separated after the death of King William IV of the United Kingdom and of Hanover. Hanover practiced the Salic law, while Britain did not. King William's niece Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, but the throne of Hanover went to William's brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_Law Wikipedia entry]

'''Tory despotism''' 
Thatcher?
: Not necessarily-- it describes Ernest himself. "The Duke of Cumberland had a reputation as one of the least pleasant of the sons of George III. Politically an arch-reactionary, he opposed the 1828 Catholic Emancipation Bill proposed by the government of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Augustus_I_of_Hanover Wikipedia entry]

'''Catholics''' 
Someone famously cited James Joyce as proof that Catholics shouldn't get university educations.

==Page 231==

'''Orange Lodges''' 
Lodges of the Orange Order, a protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly in Northern Ireland and Scotland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_lodge Wikipedia entry]

'''"from the first to the twelfth of July, anniversaries of the Boyne and Aughrim."''' 
i.e. anniversaries of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Boyne Battle of the Boyne] and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aughrim Battle of Aughrim] of the Williamite War in Ireland.

[[Image:pennyblack.jpg|thumb|100px|right|The first adhesive stamp, 1840]]
'''"the first adhesive stamps of 1840"''' 
This stamp has come to be called the Penny Black. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]

'''"immune to Time, [...] neither of them aging"''' 
Cf Oscar Wilde's only novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray], in which Dorian Gray remains young while his portrait ages.

'''springtide''' 
Cf Stray's pregnancy, a "dreamy thing" (page 201). The definition of springtide is springtime.

==Page 232==

'''Éliphaz Lévi''' 
A/K/A Eliphas Levi, ''nom de plume'' of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), French occultist and writer who pioneered a revival of Magick in the 19th Century, and was an influence on A.E. Waite, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley. An acquaintance of novelist Edward ("It was a dark and stormy night") Bulwer-Lytton. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliphas_Levi Wikipedia entry].

'''punters''' 
Punter is being used in the sense of someone who bets, someone who is taking a chance.

'''''akousmata''''' 
Greek: things heard. [[A|Good information under "A" in the alpha index.]]

'''number twenty-four''' 
Or 25? [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp11.htm etext]

'''Iamblichus''' 
(ca. 245 - ca. 325, Greek) was a neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichus_%28philosopher%29 Wikipedia]

'''maquillage''' 
French: makeup.

==Page 233==

'''Collis Brown's Mixture''' 
Contained morphine, chloroform, and caramel, among other things. [http://admin.safescript.com/drugcgic.cgi/DRUG?1006901319+0 Full ingredients]

'''xylene''' 
Xylene abuse is similar to "glue sniffing"-- xylene is a strong solvent able to cause several damages to health, especially to the brain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylene wikipedia]

'''a thousand pounds a year''' 
Over $100,000 today. [http://futureboy.homeip.net/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=1000&currency=pounds&fromYear=1900 cite]

'''"pinky"''' 
Condy's fluid is pink to purple. Methylated spirits is a kind of denatured alcohol: 95% ethyl alcohol, 5% methyl alcohol. "Pinky" would have a variety of effects, very possibly including blindness.

==Page 234==

'''Condy's fluid''' 
A disinfectant used to treat and prevent Scarlet Fever, among other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bollmann_Condy Wikipedia]

'''''tonight's the night''''' 
Considering the content here, probable reference to Neil Young's drug-addled album and its title song, "Tonight's The Night" from 1975. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonight%27s_the_Night_%28album%29 Wiki]

'''Cheapside''' 
an important market street in the City of London.

'''mews''' 
A street originally for stabling; but in modern times often converted into houses/apartments.

'''Coombs de Bottle''' 
"comes the bottle" ?

'''Russian duck''' 
Duck is strong, untwilled linen or cotton, lighter and finer than canvas. Russian duck is coarse, heavy and unbleached but softer than English duck.

==Page 235==

'''sensitive flames''' 
Cf GR p.29-32, 715.

'''extractors . . . distillation columns''' 
Separatory apparatus. An extractor works on differences in solubility, a distillation column differences in volatility.

'''tremblers and timers''' 
A trembler is a kind of motion detector used in both bombs and alarms; one kind has a flexible stem with a heavy contact on the free end so that disturbing the package it contains causes a trigger circuit to close. A timer uses a clocklike mechanism to bring two contacts together.

'''proper solvent procedures''' 
Famous 1960s "Anarchist Cookbook" was infamously inaccurate. [http://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-C-066-William-Powell/dp/0962303208 Amazon w/author's note]

==Page 236==

'''Breathless hush in the close tonight''' 
Dr. De Bottle quoting from Henry Newbolt's poem [[Vitai Lampada|"Vitaï Lampada,"]] which makes school games a metaphor and model for martial bravery.

'''The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly''' 
Cf Hornung's 'Gentleman Thief' and cricket player, Raffles. [http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/hardknox.shtml info]

Reminds me of the Krikkit Robots in Douglas Adams' ''Life, The Universe, and Everything,'' where a bomb is put in place of a Cricket Ball at a match between Britain and Australia. 

Here and elswhere the spelling of the cricket ground should be 'Headingley'.

'''The Ashes''' 
An international cricket series between England and Australia dating back to 1882. [http://www.334notout.com/ashes/reports/report21.htm dates] A number of references in this chapter relate to this rivalry. For example, on this page the English cricket ball is compared to the Australian "kookaburra". Kookaburra is the brand name of the balls used in Australia, in England it's Duke. The properties of the English ball was one of the keys to England's success in the summer of 2005. Was Pynchon's writing here influenced by the hype in the UK at the time?

'''Phosgene''' 
A poison gas used in World War I.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene Wikipedia]

'''logwood''' 
Source of red dye. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logwood Wikipedia]

'''exhiliration''' 
Misspelling of ''exhilaration.''

==Page 237==

'''beige substance''' 
Presumably Cyclomite.

'''Happy Birthday! . . . Gemini''' 
Ordinarily you would think this tagged the date as 21 May to 20 June [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_%28astrology%29 Wikipedia.] But other evidence in the text points to autumn.

'''get the Ashes back . . . next year''' 
On page 236 the Ashes (Test Matches, cricket competitions between England and Australia) are "in progress." At some time previous to this conversation Mme. Eskimoff said England will regain the trophy "next year" provided they use the young bowler Bosanquet (next entry).

Test Matches took place in (a) December 1901 to March 1902, Australia victorious; (b) May to August 1902, Australia again; (c) December 1903 to March 1904, England getting the Ashes back and Bosanquet figuring as a key bowler. When are we?

'''Bosanquet''' 
Another Ashes reference. [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/9158.html Bernard Bosanquet] invented the bosie (or googly), as described here, around 1900. A major factor in England's 2005 Ashes success was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_swing reverse swing], another type of delivery whose physical dynamics are poorly understood.

'''Pom''' 
A term for a British person commonly used in Australian English.

'''Hebrew letter Shin''' 
Obviously a nod to the Vulcan greeting in ''Star Trek'', with the distinctive hand sign and the phrase, "Live long and prosper." Perhaps also to the Jewish faith of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. See [http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/v-salute.html The Jewish origin of the Vulcan Salute]

Pynchon placed one of these in ''Mason & Dixon'', as well:

:Dixon discovers "The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter ''Shin'' and to signify, 'Live long and prosper.'( M&D 485) 
Might there be a further connection between The Cohen of T.W.I.T., the "Cohens of Paris" and these backwoods Kabbalists?

Also, note the hand on the devil tarot card above.

==Page 238==

'''Second Law of Thermodynamics''' 
The law of entropy... "The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Rudolf Clausius) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics]

There's no such thing as a perfectly efficient engine, i.e., a box that does work by taking in heat from where there is lots of heat (e.g., combustion chamber) and throwing off heat where there is not much (exhaust pipe). Something always gets lost. Similarly, the transfer of money from where there is plenty (bank) to where there isn't much (Europe) is never perfectly efficient.

"He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about something called entropy. The word bothered him... But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat engines, the other to do with communication... The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell's Demon. As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was offset by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where... Entropy is a figure of speech, then, a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow." ''The Crying of Lot 49'' (Pages 84 - 85)

'''''morsus fundamento''''' 
Latin: A bite on the ass?

The meaning is that he wouldn't know metaphysics if it bit him in the ass. Like "octogenarihexation" ("86"-ing) in Vineland--the vulgar faux fancied up.

'''three-percent consols''' 
British "consolidated" bonds, for many years the conservative investment ''par excellence.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consols wikipedia]

==Page 239==

'''Colney Hatch''' 
London lunatic asylum. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colney_Hatch_Lunatic_Asylum Wikipedia]

'''Out of the dust . . . beam of morning sunlight''' 
I.e., sometimes your horse wins.

'''ENCYCLICAL''' 
An encyclical is a letter circulated by the pope or other figure of high authority in a body of believers. A comprehensive [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical Wikipedia article] explains and adds a list of papal encyclicals. An encyclical usually takes its first 2 or 3 words as its title (''Multi et Unus'' in this case).

Of course, the Vatican would strongly protest that McTaggart, an atheist, should send out an encyclical!

'''MCTAGGART . . . HARDY''' 
Seems to refer to a historical logician joke. [http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Science_Humor/1210.html explanation] Professor McTaggart was, perhaps, the most famous philosopher
who argued that Time did not exist as we seem to experience it.
W.H. Hardy was a very famous Cambridge mathematician who knew all the
famous philosophers in England. 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._E._McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis (J. M. E.) McTaggart] (1866-1925), British philosopher. He was born in London and educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured Philosophy at Trinity College from 1897 to 1923. His brilliant commentaries and studies on Hegel's dialectic (1896), cosmology (1901) and logic (1910) were preliminaries to his own constructive system-building in ''Nature of Existence'' (3 vols., 1921-1927). In his 1908 essay "The Unreality of Time" he argued that our perception of time is an illusion (Cf [[ATD_397-428#Page_412|page 412]]: dismissing . . . the ''existence'' of Time).

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hardy.html Godfrey Harold Hardy] (1877-1947), English mathematician. He was a lecturer at Cambridge (1906-1919), professor at Oxford (1919-31) and Cambridge (1931-47). Concurrently with Wilhelm Weinberg developed Hardy-Weinberg law (1906) describing genetic distribution and dequilibrium in large populations. He was also known for contributions to complex analysis, Diophantine analysis, Fourier series, distribution of prime numbers, etc.

'''''Multi et Unus''''' 
Many and One.

'''CREATE MORE DUKES''' and '''EXPROPRIATE CHUCKERS''' 
Is the grafitti in Cambridge another cricketing reference? Dukes are the balls used in England (cf. p236). Chucking (or bending the arm when bowling) is an emotive topic in cricket that arises from time to time. It first arose around 1900 [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/258016.html]. In 2005 it caused administrators to change the rules of the game [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/144358.html].

'''The Laplacian''' 
A bar in Cambridge.
::Are you saying it is a real establishment?

::Can't say it's a fact.

A ''Laplacian'' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplacian Wikipedia entry]) is a differential operator named after Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827), a famous French mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Wikipedia entry for Laplace]

:Yesyes, but is/was there a real public house named "The Laplacian"?

:Not during ''my'' stay in Cambridge (1998-2000). Also not today, according to [http://www.cambridgepubs.com/alphabetical/ this] list.

==Page 240==

'''Worse than Gordon at Khartoum''' 
Refers to Charles George Gordon, British Major-General, whose attempted defense of Khartoum versus Arabi rebels in 1884-85 ended with his beheading. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_George_Gordon Wikipedia] cf. Basil Dearden's 1966 film ''Khartoum'', in which the role of Gordon is played by Charlton Heston.

==Page 241==

'''"You recognize him?"''' 
As, presumably, Webb.
:How can that be? Webb is dead, there's nothing to suggest he went to England, the costume is not right for him, and—most tellingly—his medium is dynamite, not phosgene.
:Who might Lew recognize in the photo? The "suspects" are Neville, Nigel, the Grand Cohen, Dr. Coombs De Bottle, Clive Crouchmas and Professor Renfrew. If Prof. Werfner looks much like Prof. Renfrew, he goes on the list too. If the "Gentleman Bomber" is allowed to be possibly female, add Yashmeen and Mme. Eskimoff. We haven't met anyone else (except members of the Icosadyad, who don't have faces).
:Suppose we rule out the ladies and Werfner. Neville or Nigel wouldn't be able to hide their identities with a suit of white flannels. Renfrew is sitting right there when Lew sees the picture, but Lew's reaction (his stomach sinks) does not seem Lew-like if it's Renfrew he has recognized. The Cohen, De Bottle and Crouchmas are left.
:Would Lew experience dread on spotting Crouchmas? He doesn't know much about C.C. at this point, so it isn't clear why he would suppress that recognition.
:Seeing the Cohen might lead to this gastric reaction: Lew might think he's on the fringe of an anarchist group again (and look where it got him the last time). The Cohen stays on the list.
:Dr. De Bottle not only follows cricket but bets on it; he speaks almost with reverence about phosgene; he knows a nonobvious fact about the bombs; and he dresses like a gentleman. None of these points applies to the Cohen. And recognizing De Bottle would give Lew that sinking feeling because D.B. is purportedly fighting against bombers on behalf of the government.
:De Bottle goes to the top of the short list.

'''A bosie from a beamer''' 
More cricket! A bosie is now more commonly known as a googly (cf. p237). A beamer is a full-pitched delivery that reaches the batsman above waist height.

==Page 242==

[[Image:globenorth.gif|thumb|150px|The northern hemisphere]]

'''''unheimlich''''' 
German: uncanny, sinister.

 

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 219-242

2007-04-04T15:23:31Z

Gobbag: /* Page 225 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 219==

[[image:tetractys.png|thumb|175px|right|The Tetractys]]'''True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys''' 
The Tetractys is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, and nutbars of other affiliations since. It has all kinds of symbological meaning, including the four elements, the organization of space, the Tarot, etc. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys Wikipedia entry];

:In the Pythagorean tetractys the supreme symbol of universal forces and processes are set forth the theories of the Greeks concerning color and music. The first three dots represent the threefold White Light, which is the Godhead containing potentially all sound and color. The remaining seven dots are the colors of the spectrum and the notes of the musical scale. The colors and tones are the active creative powers which, emanating from the First Cause, establish the universe. The seven are divided into two groups, one containing three powers and the other four a relationship also shown in the tetractys. The higher group that of three becomes the spiritual nature of the created universe; the lower group that of four manifests as the irrational sphere, or inferior world. <ref>From [http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/ ''The Secret Teachings of All Ages''] by Manly P. Hall (1928)</ref>

:This division (three/four) has to be related to the "trivium" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and "quadrivium" (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) of the [http://www.cosmopolis.com/villa/liberal-arts.html Medieval liberal arts.]

More effably, if you flip the Tetractys left to right, it gives the positions of the pins in ten-pin bowling.

The acronym T.W.I.T is most appropriate: a twit is an ineffectual buffoon. Neville and Nigel are certainly twits.

I believe the above really misses the Big Symbol, i.e., Pynchon's linking of T.W.I.T. with the vagina, i.e., the female ''sex'' organ. "T.W.I.T." sounds like no, ''is'' a cross between "clit" and "twat." And, natch, it's headed up by [[#Page 220|Nookshaft]]. And, let's face it, that tetractys is surely an inverted beaver, yes? (See [[ATD 171-198#Page 183|"Beavers of the Brain"]]). Its male counterpart is [[ATD 397-428#Page 405|Candlebrow U.]], to be encountered down the road apiece (and that ain't no spoiler!).

'''Chunxton Crescent''' 
Invented by Pynchon. "Crescent" is a female symbol in many mythologies and cultures, and it reinforces T.W.I.T.'s association with the female sex. But "Chunxton"?

:The moon is seen as a female symbol, and was worshipped in ancient times as a powerful force. It is believed to be linked to the unconscious and our feminine side. The sacredness of the moon has been connected with the basic cyclic rhythms of life. The changing phases of the moon were linked to the death and rebirth seen in crops and the seasons, and also to the female monthly cycle that controls human fertility. The moon calendar is still important and many festivals exist around the lunar phases. [http://www.new-age.co.uk/moon-dates.htm]

''Chunxton'' may be derived from "chunk stone" or "chunk(s) town." I'm inclined to favor the first. "Chunk stone" has two main meanings: (1) stone that's quarried in chunks instead of blocks, slabs or crystals; (2) a magical stone that figures in some American Indian stories. Turquoise and amethyst chunk stones are often made into jewelry as-is, or [http://www.bridastone.com/chunkstone.htm larger chunks of (say) marble] can be used as decoration. Here are links to two Indian stories in which people use chunk stones in finding or tracking: [http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/se/mtsi/mtsi156.htm first,] [http://romeoandjuliet.ws/books/native_american/se/mtsi/mtsi270.shtml second.] Of course it's also possible that "chunk" is the verb meaning "throw," in which case there ought to be a "glass houses" connection somewhere; I can't find it.

'''Tyburnia''' 
"Tyburnia occupies the ground on the north side of Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens, and stretches from Edgware-road on the east to about Inverness-terrace on the west. This is not, strictly speaking, a fashionable quarter; but it is not absolutely unfashionable, and is a very favourite part with those — lawyers, merchants, and others—who have to reside in town the greater part of the year." Charles Dickens (Jr.), ''Dickens's Dictionary of London'', 1879.

'''Sir John Soane''' 
(1753 – 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Soane Wikipedia entry]

'''Madame Blavatsky''' 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Russian-born founder of the Theosophical Society. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and false or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Blavatsky Wikipedia]

'''century had rushed . . . out the other side''' 
An instant of zero, not a whole year, because they aren't yet "out the other side" of 1900. ??? A century is 100 years. The one referred to here lasted from 1800-1899 and, since it's 1900, it has "rushed to its end."
:Missing the point. The image focuses on the ''zero.'' And please, let's not have that sterile argument about when a century begins!

==Page 220==

'''not even if that tartan were authentic''' 
It's a solecism in England, but is (or was) a prosecutable offense in Scotland, to wear the tartan of a clan one doesn't belong to.

'''Caen stone''' 
A cream-colored limestone for building, found near Caen, France.

'''syrinx''' 
a primitive wind instrument consisting of several parallel pipes bound together; panpipes.

'''lyre''' 
an ancient form of harp, so syrinx and lyre are like flute and harp. A famous Concerto for flute and harp is the work of G. F. Handel, who also composed the ''Messiah.''

'''ten-in-one''' 
Ten sideshow acts for one admission. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow Wikipedia]

'''Nicholas Nookshaft''' 
Grand Cohen Nicholas Nookshaft's name reinforces the linking of [[#Page 219|T.W.I.T.]] to the female sex organ, "Nooky shaft" being a vulgarism for the vagina.

'''Grand Cohen''' 
'Cohen' is Hebrew for 'priest'.

==Page 221==

'''Couldn't have been the same world as the one you're in now''' 
Raising the possibility that Lew got blown up in one world and shifted to another.

'''"Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really."''' 
Could this be the explanation for some of the most inexplicable scenes from the book thus far: Lew Basnight's first encounter with the Drave group (around [[ATD_26-56#Page_39|page 39]]) and Hunter Penhallow's escape from the mysterious creature (around [[ATD_149-170#Pages_154-155|page 154]])? Parallel worlds?

''''Tzaddik'''' 
A righteous Jew. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadik Wikipedia]

==Page 222==

'''The Tetractys isn't the only thing round here that's ineffable''' 
Schoolyard joke. "F" a euphemism for fuck, so "ineffable" = unfuckable also describes Yashmeen.

'''Eighteenth Hussars''' 
Prestigious British cavalry regiment. Stationed in India 1864-76 and 1890-98; Halfcourt's secondment must have taken place at one of these times.

'''Simla''' 
British outpost in Himalayas. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimla Wikipedia]

'''Smartly taken at silly point''' 
A cricketing reference. Silly point is a fielding position very close to the batsman. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=smartly.taken+silly.point examples]

'''To know, to dare, to will, to keep silent''' 
Mystical formula. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=to.know.to.dare.to.will examples]
The four precepts of Western Magick, extensively discussed in the writings of Aleister Crowley.

'''In the States, "detective" doesn't mean—''' 
. . . An agent who solves criminal cases. The major "detective" bureaus hired personnel out as bodyguards and muscle.

'''"There is but one 'case' which occupies us"''' 
This echoes the famous quote from Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'': "The world is all that is the case." (See the full text of the ''Tractatus'' [http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html here].) This quote also factors in heavily in V. (Specifically, in two places: there's the [http://www.phil-reed.com/2006/02/14/the-love-songs-of-thomas-pynchon/ P's and Q's love song], and also in Captain Weissman's repeating, encoded, hallucinated message over the telegraph in Africa.)

'''The Number 22''' 
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really. 22 is the number of cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, the section of the deck that has been removed from the modern playing deck which only has the suits (elements) and the Court cards. The 22 Major Arcana are numbers 0 to 21 and move from The Fool card to the Universe. Purportedly and symbolically, the progression of cards tell a tale of the evolutionary path of the Soul in its course. The 22 cards also, in some systems, map onto the 22 paths that connect the spheres of the Kabalistic Tree of Life (which also is mentioned in this chapter). An understanding of the Tarot cards cannot be achieved with an understanding how they relate to the Tree of Life. They are the relationships between the Sephiroths which in turn at 10 in number, just like the Tetractys and portray the energies that flow from the highest monad of Divinity (Kether) down into the manifested world (Malkuth). Pynchon makes use of both the Tarot and the Kabalah in Against the Day as well as Gravity's Rainbow.

See also the novel ''The Greater Trumps'' by Charles Williams for a similar intrusion of the characters of the Major Arcana into everyday English life.

==Page 223==

'''"And the crime... just what would be the nature of that?"''' 
Might Lew himself be one of the 22 suspects? Perhaps the ineffable crime is what made people treat him like a pariah earlier in the book.

==Page 224==

'''"'walking out'"''' 
A walking date.

'''the veil of ''maya''''' 
In Hinduism, maya is the phenomenal world of separate objects and people, which creates for some the illusion that it is the only reality. In Hindu philosophy, maya is believed to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self. Many philosophies or religions seek to "pierce the veil" in order to glimpse the transcendent truth. Arthur Schopenhauer used the term "Veil of Maya" to describe his view of ''The World as Will and Representation''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion) Wikipedia entry]

'''the ancient London landscape . . . known to the Druids''' 
Peter Ackroyd's recent ''London, the Biography'' devotes many pages to sacred and magical features of the city. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid "Druid"].

'''Trumper's''' 
London's royal barbers since 1875. [http://www.trumpers.com/ site]

'''On this island [...] all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted''' 
A sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Pynchon's December 2006 letter written in defense of novelist Ian McEwan: "Given the British genius for coded utterance..." [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/06/nwriter06.xml Image of Letter]

'''crosswords in newspapers''' 
The first crossword to appear in a newspaper was in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossword#History 1913]. Cryptic crosswords in British newspapers certainly match Pynchon's description. See, for example, [http://www.crossword.org.uk/listen.htm the Listener crossword].

==Page 225==

'''Girton College''' 
For women, founded 1869. [http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/about/history/brief.html history]

'''Next they'll be letting you folks vote.''' 
Women were granted the right to vote in England in 1928.

'''"the vast jangling thronged somehow monumental London evening"''' 
This kind of eschewing of punctuation might be expected in Joyce but it's not typical of Pynchon and seems to serve no special purpose here. A typo?

'''Pamela Colman Smith''' 
Illustrator of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith "Wikipedia"].

'''Arthur Edward Waite''' 
Occultist and co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Waite Wikipedia]

'''four stone''' 
56 pounds.

'''Uckenfays''' 
Ucken-fay is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin "pig latin"] for 'fucken'.

'''''gaver du visage''''' 
A literal translation of "stuff one's face", though this is not how it is said in French (it would be se gaver or se baffrer). [http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/g/gaver.htm cite]

'''cigar-divan''' 
A smoking salon (divan) for cigar smokers.

Interestingly, a work by Robert Louis Stevenson, from 1903, entitled The Dynamiter begins with a "Prologue of the Cigar Divan".

==Page 226==

'''Seven Dials''' 
bad area in London, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dials Wikipedia entry]

[[image:tarotdevil.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Devil by Colman-Smith]]

'''growler''' 
Four-wheeled [http://www.bbno.freeserve.co.uk/glossary.htm carriage] drawn by four horses. Supplanted by the Hansom cab.

<div id="renfrew"></div>'''Renfrew at Cambridge and Werfner at Göttingen''' 
Note that each Professor's name is the other's spelled backward.

Also notice the theme of dual natures or forces. The two professors are "bound and ... could not separate even if they wanted to." They become rivals within the broader conflict of the 'Great Game' -- the political rivalry over Central Asia being played out by the various European powers, but especially by Great Britain and the Russian Empire.

[http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambuniv/index.html Cambridge University] is one of the oldest and the best universities in the world. In 2009 it will be celebrating its 800th Anniversary. In its early day, Cambridge was a center of the new learning of the Renaissance and of the theology of the Reformation; in modern times it has excelled in science. It is now a confederation of 31 Colleges (such as King's, Girton, St.John, Trinity and others mentioned in ATD), consists of over 100 departments and faculties, and other institutions. Since 1904, 81 affiliates of Cambridge have won Nobel Prize in every category: 29 in Physics, 22 in Medicine, 19 in Chemistry, 7 in Economics, 2 in Literature and 2 in Peace.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-August_University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen Göttingen University], one of the most famous universities in Europe, founded in Göttingen, Germany, in 1737 by King George II of England in his capacity as Elector of Hanover. At the end of the 19th century, it became world famous because of its Departments of Mathematics and Physics and rivaled Cambridge for eminence. The reputation of the university was founded by many eminent professors who are commemorated by statues and plaques all over the campus. It claimed 44 Nobel Laureates. But it suffered from the 1933 Great Purge of the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish Physics" and never recovered its original fame.

'''Berlin Conference of 1878''' 
Divided Balkans after Russo-Turkish War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin Wikipedia]

'''English, . . . , Japanese—not to mention indigenous—components''' 
''Not to mention'' them was exactly the point as the Great Powers sorted out the Ottoman possessions.

==Page 227==

'''"The Great Game"''' 
The Great Game was a term used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The term was later popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, ''Kim''. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia entry] Also the name of Padzhitnoff's airship.

'''mamluk lamps''' 
A [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/07/nfe/hob_17.190.985.htm mosque lamp]
from the [http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/mamluks.php mamluk] era.

'''...the Kabbalist Tree of Life, with the names of the Sephiroth spelled out in Hebrew, which had brought her more than enough of that uniquely snot-nosed British anti-Semitism... ''' 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] is the ancient study of Jewish mysticism, long shrouded in mystery and kept from all but a devout few of the most dedicated Talmudic scholars. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tree_of_Life_Medieval.jpg.jpg Tree of Life] is one of the central symbols of Kabbalah, supposedly a physical representation of the path of enlightenment from the most base knowledge of the physical world (at the bottom), to the highest spiritual planes of understanding (at the top). The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot Sephiroth] are the nodes of the Tree, representing the various "stages" of understanding. Of course, tihs is all a very gross oversimplifcation and hardly does justice to the term itself.

The "Quabbalah" or "Cabalah" being studied by Madonna and others in Hollywood is a secularized and co-opted form of the original Kabbalah, which is deeply connected to the Torah and Jewish life.

In Medieval Europe, Kabbalist scholars wore amulets and other symbols on their clothing, and were often misunderstood to be magicians or wizards (think Merlin). The common magician's expression "abra cadabra" has Kabbalistic origins.

'''"Eskimoff . . . I say what sort of name is that?"''' 
Tiptoeing around the real question, "Is she Jewish?"

'''English Rose''' 
The phrase "English Rose" or "Bonnie English Rose" when applied to a woman means her skin is unblemished, her coloring subtle, her temper sweet. Madame Eskimoff, in short, is a beauty in a traditional English style. 
(Incidentally, an officially unrecognized designation of [http://www.marinrose.org/englishroses.html roses].)

==Page 228==

'''Oliver Lodge''' 
English physicist, inventor and writer (1851-1940) involved in the development of wireless telegraphy and radio. After the death of his son in 1915, Lodge became interested in spiritualism and life after death and wrote several books on the subject. Lodge conducted research on lightning, electricity, electromagnetism and wrote about the aether, themes that are repeated throughout ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Joseph_Lodge Wikipedia entry].

'''William Crookes''' 
English chemist and physicist (1832-1919) who worked in spectroscopy and whose work pioneered the construction and use of vacuum tubes. Like Oliver Lodge, Crookes was also a spiritualist, which appears to be Pynchon's reason for grouping him with others in this passage, although his experiments in electricity and light also tie in with these themes in ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crookes Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Piper''' 
Probably [http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/piper.htm Leonora Piper] 1857-1950.

'''Eusapia Palladino''' 
(1854-1918) Famous italian spiritualist medium.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino Wikipedia entry]. It's fair to say she was often caught cheating.

'''W.T. Stead''' 
William T. Stead (1849-1912), British writer, poet, social crusader, and spiritualist. He went down with the ''Titanic.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Stead Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Burchell''' 
The Yorkshire Seeress, investigated by WT Stead. [http://www.wholeagain.com/prophecyfodor.html cite]

'''assassination''' 
Trouble with the time here. Lew's timeline points pretty strongly to autumn 1900. A séance that's "about to" go on Mme. Eskimoff's résumé, however, leads the murder of the Serbian king and queen by three months, and the murder itself occurred in June 1903, which seems to imply March of that year.

'''Alexander and Draga Obrenovich, the King and Queen of Serbia''' 
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Obrenovich Wikipedia] the assassination occured on 11 June 1903, so the seance at which Mrs. Burchell "witnessed" it, should have taken place in March 1903.

'''Parsons-Short Auxetophone''' 
[http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/auxetophone/auxetoph.htm pic and info]

'''electros of the original wax impressions''' 
A thin film of metal was electroplated onto the wax, then peeled off and wrapped around a new cylinder.

==Page 229==

'''syntonic''' 
A term used in both engineering and psychology. Psychology: "Characterized by a high degree of emotional responsiveness to the environment." Electricity: "Of or relating to two oscillating circuits having the same resonant frequency."

'''the Russo-Turkish War''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War,_1877–1878 The Russo-Turkish War] (1877-1878), the latest Russo-Turkish War of many fought between these two contries since 16th century as a result of Russian attempts to find an outlet on the Black Sea and to conquer the Caucasus, dominate the Balkan Peninsula, gain control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, and retain access to world trade routes. The last Russo-Turkish War came as a result of the anti-Ottoman uprising (1875) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria. On Russian instigation, Serbia and Montenegro joined the rebels; after securing Austrian neutrality, Russia openly entered the War in 1877. The War ended in 1878 resulted in the Treaty of San Stefano which so thoroughly revised the map in favor of Russia and her client, Bulgaria, that the European powers called a conference (the Congress of Berlin) to revise its terms by the Treaty of Berlin.

==Page 230==

'''King's... Girton''' 
King's College is one of the most famous and historic colleges at Cambridge, founded in 1441. Girton College, Cambridge, was established in 1869 as the first residential college for women in England.

'''Michaelmas term''' 
The fall term, starting early October (1900 here). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaelmas_term Wikipedia]

'''tweeny''' 
A [http://www.bartleby.com/68/30/830.html between-maid].

'''Edward Oxford''' 
attempted to shoot Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, at the time of her first pregnancy (1840).[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Oxford Wikipedia]

'''had the young Queen died then without issue''' 
Nookshaft posits two scenarios: (1) The implicit, unmentioned, and not as "interesting" possibility that everything is actual, as it "appears" to be in the "real" world, surrounding Queen Victoria; that she is simply an old, vain regent. (2) "the 'real' Vic is elsewhere," and the current, aged Victoria is a ghostly stand-in. Nookshaft implies that this figure is a proxy or puppet of Ernst-August. If this were "the case," then the question shifts to the following: (a) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive in cahoots with Ernst-August in the "real" world? or: (b) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive NOT in cahoots with Ernst-August, who nevertheless ascends to the throne with real-Vic out of the way, and imposes the stand-in? In which case: What would be the motivation of the underworld-entity third-party? And who, or what, specifically, is it?

'''sixty years ago''' 
One event of 1840, the attempt on Victoria's life, is referred to as sixty years ago; another, the issue of the first adhesive stamps, as more than sixty years ago.

'''Salic law''' 
was a body of traditional law that codified policy on matters such as inheritance, crime, and murder. The British and Hanoverian thrones separated after the death of King William IV of the United Kingdom and of Hanover. Hanover practiced the Salic law, while Britain did not. King William's niece Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, but the throne of Hanover went to William's brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_Law Wikipedia entry]

'''Tory despotism''' 
Thatcher?
: Not necessarily-- it describes Ernest himself. "The Duke of Cumberland had a reputation as one of the least pleasant of the sons of George III. Politically an arch-reactionary, he opposed the 1828 Catholic Emancipation Bill proposed by the government of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Augustus_I_of_Hanover Wikipedia entry]

'''Catholics''' 
Someone famously cited James Joyce as proof that Catholics shouldn't get university educations.

==Page 231==

'''Orange Lodges''' 
Lodges of the Orange Order, a protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly in Northern Ireland and Scotland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_lodge Wikipedia entry]

'''"from the first to the twelfth of July, anniversaries of the Boyne and Aughrim."''' 
i.e. anniversaries of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Boyne Battle of the Boyne] and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aughrim Battle of Aughrim] of the Williamite War in Ireland.

[[Image:pennyblack.jpg|thumb|100px|right|The first adhesive stamp, 1840]]
'''"the first adhesive stamps of 1840"''' 
This stamp has come to be called the Penny Black. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]

'''"immune to Time, [...] neither of them aging"''' 
Cf Oscar Wilde's only novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray], in which Dorian Gray remains young while his portrait ages.

'''springtide''' 
Cf Stray's pregnancy, a "dreamy thing" (page 201). The definition of springtide is springtime.

==Page 232==

'''Éliphaz Lévi''' 
A/K/A Eliphas Levi, ''nom de plume'' of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), French occultist and writer who pioneered a revival of Magick in the 19th Century, and was an influence on A.E. Waite, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley. An acquaintance of novelist Edward ("It was a dark and stormy night") Bulwer-Lytton. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliphas_Levi Wikipedia entry].

'''punters''' 
Punter is being used in the sense of someone who bets, someone who is taking a chance.

'''''akousmata''''' 
Greek: things heard. [[A|Good information under "A" in the alpha index.]]

'''number twenty-four''' 
Or 25? [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp11.htm etext]

'''Iamblichus''' 
(ca. 245 - ca. 325, Greek) was a neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichus_%28philosopher%29 Wikipedia]

'''maquillage''' 
French: makeup.

==Page 233==

'''Collis Brown's Mixture''' 
Contained morphine, chloroform, and caramel, among other things. [http://admin.safescript.com/drugcgic.cgi/DRUG?1006901319+0 Full ingredients]

'''xylene''' 
Xylene abuse is similar to "glue sniffing"-- xylene is a strong solvent able to cause several damages to health, especially to the brain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylene wikipedia]

'''a thousand pounds a year''' 
Over $100,000 today. [http://futureboy.homeip.net/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=1000&currency=pounds&fromYear=1900 cite]

'''"pinky"''' 
Condy's fluid is pink to purple. Methylated spirits is a kind of denatured alcohol: 95% ethyl alcohol, 5% methyl alcohol. "Pinky" would have a variety of effects, very possibly including blindness.

==Page 234==

'''Condy's fluid''' 
A disinfectant used to treat and prevent Scarlet Fever, among other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bollmann_Condy Wikipedia]

'''''tonight's the night''''' 
Considering the content here, probable reference to Neil Young's drug-addled album and its title song, "Tonight's The Night" from 1975. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonight%27s_the_Night_%28album%29 Wiki]

'''Cheapside''' 
an important market street in the City of London.

'''mews''' 
A street originally for stabling; but in modern times often converted into houses/apartments.

'''Coombs de Bottle''' 
"comes the bottle" ?

'''Russian duck''' 
Duck is strong, untwilled linen or cotton, lighter and finer than canvas. Russian duck is coarse, heavy and unbleached but softer than English duck.

==Page 235==

'''sensitive flames''' 
Cf GR p.29-32, 715.

'''extractors . . . distillation columns''' 
Separatory apparatus. An extractor works on differences in solubility, a distillation column differences in volatility.

'''tremblers and timers''' 
A trembler is a kind of motion detector used in both bombs and alarms; one kind has a flexible stem with a heavy contact on the free end so that disturbing the package it contains causes a trigger circuit to close. A timer uses a clocklike mechanism to bring two contacts together.

'''proper solvent procedures''' 
Famous 1960s "Anarchist Cookbook" was infamously inaccurate. [http://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-C-066-William-Powell/dp/0962303208 Amazon w/author's note]

==Page 236==

'''Breathless hush in the close tonight''' 
Dr. De Bottle quoting from Henry Newbolt's poem [[Vitai Lampada|"Vitaï Lampada,"]] which makes school games a metaphor and model for martial bravery.

'''The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly''' 
Cf Hornung's 'Gentleman Thief' and cricket player, Raffles. [http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/hardknox.shtml info]

Reminds me of the Krikkit Robots in Douglas Adams' ''Life, The Universe, and Everything,'' where a bomb is put in place of a Cricket Ball at a match between Britain and Australia. 

Here and elswhere the spelling of the cricket ground should be 'Headingley'.

'''The Ashes''' 
An international cricket series between England and Australia dating back to 1882. [http://www.334notout.com/ashes/reports/report21.htm dates] A number of references in this chapter relate to this rivalry. For example, on this page the English cricket ball is compared to the Australian "kookaburra". Kookaburra is the brand name of the balls used in Australia, in England it's Duke. The properties of the English ball was one of the keys to England's success in the summer of 2005. Was Pynchon's writing here influenced by the hype in the UK at the time?

'''Phosgene''' 
A poison gas used in World War I.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene Wikipedia]

'''logwood''' 
Source of red dye. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logwood Wikipedia]

'''exhiliration''' 
Misspelling of ''exhilaration.''

==Page 237==

'''beige substance''' 
Presumably Cyclomite.

'''Happy Birthday! . . . Gemini''' 
Ordinarily you would think this tagged the date as 21 May to 20 June [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_%28astrology%29 Wikipedia.] But other evidence in the text points to autumn.

'''get the Ashes back . . . next year''' 
On page 236 the Ashes (Test Matches, cricket competitions between England and Australia) are "in progress." At some time previous to this conversation Mme. Eskimoff said England will regain the trophy "next year" provided they use the young bowler Bosanquet (next entry).

Test Matches took place in (a) December 1901 to March 1902, Australia victorious; (b) May to August 1902, Australia again; (c) December 1903 to March 1904, England getting the Ashes back and Bosanquet figuring as a key bowler. When are we?

'''Bosanquet''' 
Another Ashes reference. [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/9158.html Bernard Bosanquet] invented the bosie (or googly), as described here, around 1900. A major factor in England's 2005 Ashes success was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_swing reverse swing], another type of delivery whose physical dynamics are poorly understood.

'''Pom''' 
A term for a British person commonly used in Australian English.

'''Hebrew letter Shin''' 
Obviously a nod to the Vulcan greeting in ''Star Trek'', with the distinctive hand sign and the phrase, "Live long and prosper." Perhaps also to the Jewish faith of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. See [http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/v-salute.html The Jewish origin of the Vulcan Salute]

Pynchon placed one of these in ''Mason & Dixon'', as well:

:Dixon discovers "The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter ''Shin'' and to signify, 'Live long and prosper.'( M&D 485) 
Might there be a further connection between The Cohen of T.W.I.T., the "Cohens of Paris" and these backwoods Kabbalists?

Also, note the hand on the devil tarot card above.

==Page 238==

'''Second Law of Thermodynamics''' 
The law of entropy... "The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Rudolf Clausius) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics]

There's no such thing as a perfectly efficient engine, i.e., a box that does work by taking in heat from where there is lots of heat (e.g., combustion chamber) and throwing off heat where there is not much (exhaust pipe). Something always gets lost. Similarly, the transfer of money from where there is plenty (bank) to where there isn't much (Europe) is never perfectly efficient.

"He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about something called entropy. The word bothered him... But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat engines, the other to do with communication... The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell's Demon. As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was offset by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where... Entropy is a figure of speech, then, a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow." ''The Crying of Lot 49'' (Pages 84 - 85)

'''''morsus fundamento''''' 
Latin: A bite on the ass?

The meaning is that he wouldn't know metaphysics if it bit him in the ass. Like "octogenarihexation" ("86"-ing) in Vineland--the vulgar faux fancied up.

'''three-percent consols''' 
British "consolidated" bonds, for many years the conservative investment ''par excellence.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consols wikipedia]

==Page 239==

'''Colney Hatch''' 
London lunatic asylum. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colney_Hatch_Lunatic_Asylum Wikipedia]

'''Out of the dust . . . beam of morning sunlight''' 
I.e., sometimes your horse wins.

'''ENCYCLICAL''' 
An encyclical is a letter circulated by the pope or other figure of high authority in a body of believers. A comprehensive [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical Wikipedia article] explains and adds a list of papal encyclicals. An encyclical usually takes its first 2 or 3 words as its title (''Multi et Unus'' in this case).

Of course, the Vatican would strongly protest that McTaggart, an atheist, should send out an encyclical!

'''MCTAGGART . . . HARDY''' 
Seems to refer to a historical logician joke. [http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Science_Humor/1210.html explanation] Professor McTaggart was, perhaps, the most famous philosopher
who argued that Time did not exist as we seem to experience it.
W.H. Hardy was a very famous Cambridge mathematician who knew all the
famous philosophers in England. 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._E._McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis (J. M. E.) McTaggart] (1866-1925), British philosopher. He was born in London and educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured Philosophy at Trinity College from 1897 to 1923. His brilliant commentaries and studies on Hegel's dialectic (1896), cosmology (1901) and logic (1910) were preliminaries to his own constructive system-building in ''Nature of Existence'' (3 vols., 1921-1927). In his 1908 essay "The Unreality of Time" he argued that our perception of time is an illusion (Cf [[ATD_397-428#Page_412|page 412]]: dismissing . . . the ''existence'' of Time).

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hardy.html Godfrey Harold Hardy] (1877-1947), English mathematician. He was a lecturer at Cambridge (1906-1919), professor at Oxford (1919-31) and Cambridge (1931-47). Concurrently with Wilhelm Weinberg developed Hardy-Weinberg law (1906) describing genetic distribution and dequilibrium in large populations. He was also known for contributions to complex analysis, Diophantine analysis, Fourier series, distribution of prime numbers, etc.

'''''Multi et Unus''''' 
Many and One.

'''CREATE MORE DUKES''' and '''EXPROPRIATE CHUCKERS''' 
Is the grafitti in Cambridge another cricketing reference? Dukes are the balls used in England (cf. p236). Chucking (or bending the arm when bowling) is an emotive topic in cricket that arises from time to time. It first arose around 1900 [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/258016.html]. In 2005 it caused administrators to change the rules of the game [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/144358.html].

'''The Laplacian''' 
A bar in Cambridge.
::Are you saying it is a real establishment?

::Can't say it's a fact.

A ''Laplacian'' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplacian Wikipedia entry]) is a differential operator named after Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827), a famous French mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Wikipedia entry for Laplace]

:Yesyes, but is/was there a real public house named "The Laplacian"?

:Not during ''my'' stay in Cambridge (1998-2000). Also not today, according to [http://www.cambridgepubs.com/alphabetical/ this] list.

==Page 240==

'''Worse than Gordon at Khartoum''' 
Refers to Charles George Gordon, British Major-General, whose attempted defense of Khartoum versus Arabi rebels in 1884-85 ended with his beheading. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_George_Gordon Wikipedia] cf. Basil Dearden's 1966 film ''Khartoum'', in which the role of Gordon is played by Charlton Heston.

==Page 241==

'''"You recognize him?"''' 
As, presumably, Webb.
:How can that be? Webb is dead, there's nothing to suggest he went to England, the costume is not right for him, and—most tellingly—his medium is dynamite, not phosgene.
:Who might Lew recognize in the photo? The "suspects" are Neville, Nigel, the Grand Cohen, Dr. Coombs De Bottle, Clive Crouchmas and Professor Renfrew. If Prof. Werfner looks much like Prof. Renfrew, he goes on the list too. If the "Gentleman Bomber" is allowed to be possibly female, add Yashmeen and Mme. Eskimoff. We haven't met anyone else (except members of the Icosadyad, who don't have faces).
:Suppose we rule out the ladies and Werfner. Neville or Nigel wouldn't be able to hide their identities with a suit of white flannels. Renfrew is sitting right there when Lew sees the picture, but Lew's reaction (his stomach sinks) does not seem Lew-like if it's Renfrew he has recognized. The Cohen, De Bottle and Crouchmas are left.
:Would Lew experience dread on spotting Crouchmas? He doesn't know much about C.C. at this point, so it isn't clear why he would suppress that recognition.
:Seeing the Cohen might lead to this gastric reaction: Lew might think he's on the fringe of an anarchist group again (and look where it got him the last time). The Cohen stays on the list.
:Dr. De Bottle not only follows cricket but bets on it; he speaks almost with reverence about phosgene; he knows a nonobvious fact about the bombs; and he dresses like a gentleman. None of these points applies to the Cohen. And recognizing De Bottle would give Lew that sinking feeling because D.B. is purportedly fighting against bombers on behalf of the government.
:De Bottle goes to the top of the short list.

'''A bosie from a beamer''' 
More cricket! A bosie is now more commonly known as a googly (cf. p237). A beamer is a full-pitched delivery that reaches the batsman above waist height.

==Page 242==

[[Image:globenorth.gif|thumb|150px|The northern hemisphere]]

'''''unheimlich''''' 
German: uncanny, sinister.

 

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 219-242

2007-03-18T00:57:51Z

Gobbag: /* Page 219 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 219==

[[image:tetractys.png|thumb|175px|right|The Tetractys]]'''True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys''' 
The Tetractys is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, and nutbars of other affiliations since. It has all kinds of symbological meaning, including the four elements, the organization of space, the Tarot, etc. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys Wikipedia entry];

:In the Pythagorean tetractys the supreme symbol of universal forces and processes are set forth the theories of the Greeks concerning color and music. The first three dots represent the threefold White Light, which is the Godhead containing potentially all sound and color. The remaining seven dots are the colors of the spectrum and the notes of the musical scale. The colors and tones are the active creative powers which, emanating from the First Cause, establish the universe. The seven are divided into two groups, one containing three powers and the other four a relationship also shown in the tetractys. The higher group that of three becomes the spiritual nature of the created universe; the lower group that of four manifests as the irrational sphere, or inferior world. <ref>From [http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/ ''The Secret Teachings of All Ages''] by Manly P. Hall (1928)</ref>

:This division (three/four) has to be related to the "trivium" (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and "quadrivium" (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) of the [http://www.cosmopolis.com/villa/liberal-arts.html Medieval liberal arts.]

More effably, if you flip the Tetractys left to right, it gives the positions of the pins in ten-pin bowling.

The acronym T.W.I.T is most appropriate: a twit is an ineffectual buffoon. Neville and Nigel are certainly twits.

'''Chunxton Crescent''' 
Invented by Pynchon.

'''Tyburnia''' 
"Tyburnia occupies the ground on the north side of Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens, and stretches from Edgware-road on the east to about Inverness-terrace on the west. This is not, strictly speaking, a fashionable quarter; but it is not absolutely unfashionable, and is a very favourite part with those — lawyers, merchants, and others—who have to reside in town the greater part of the year." Charles Dickens (Jr.), ''Dickens's Dictionary of London'', 1879.

'''Sir John Soane''' 
(1753 – 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Soane Wikipedia entry]

'''Madame Blavatsky''' 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Russian-born founder of the Theosophical Society. Madame Blavatsky claimed that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and false or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Blavatsky Wikipedia]

'''century had rushed . . . out the other side''' 
An instant of zero, not a whole year, because they aren't yet "out the other side" of 1900.

==Page 220==

'''not even if that tartan were authentic''' 
It's a solecism in England, but is (or was) a prosecutable offense in Scotland, to wear the tartan of a clan one doesn't belong to.

'''Caen stone''' 
A cream-colored limestone for building, found near Caen, France.

'''syrinx''' 
a primitive wind instrument consisting of several parallel pipes bound together; panpipes.

'''lyre''' 
an ancient form of harp, so syrinx and lyre are like flute and harp. A famous Concerto for flute and harp is the work of G. F. Handel, who also composed the ''Messiah.''

'''ten-in-one''' 
Ten sideshow acts for one admission. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow Wikipedia]

'''Grand Cohen''' 
'Cohen' is Hebrew for 'priest'.

==Page 221==

'''Couldn't have been the same world as the one you're in now''' 
Raising the possibility that Lew got blown up in one world and shifted to another.

'''"Lateral world-sets, other parts of the Creation, lie all around us, each with its crossover points or gates of transfer from one to another, and they can be anywhere, really."''' 
Could this be the explanation for some of the most inexplicable scenes from the book thus far: Lew Basnight's first encounter with the Drave group (around [[ATD_26-56#Page_39|page 39]]) and Hunter Penhallow's escape from the mysterious creature (around [[ATD_149-170#Pages_154-155|page 154]])? Parallel worlds?

''''Tzaddik'''' 
A righteous Jew. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadik Wikipedia]

==Page 222==

'''The Tetractys isn't the only thing round here that's ineffable''' 
Schoolyard joke. "F" a euphemism for fuck, so "ineffable" = unfuckable also describes Yashmeen.

'''Eighteenth Hussars''' 
Prestigious British cavalry regiment. Stationed in India 1864-76 and 1890-98; Halfcourt's secondment must have taken place at one of these times.

'''Simla''' 
British outpost in Himalayas. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimla Wikipedia]

'''Smartly taken at silly point''' 
A cricketing reference. Silly point is a fielding position very close to the batsman. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=smartly.taken+silly.point examples]

'''To know, to dare, to will, to keep silent''' 
Mystical formula. [http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=to.know.to.dare.to.will examples]
The four precepts of Western Magick, extensively discussed in the writings of Aleister Crowley.

'''In the States, "detective" doesn't mean—''' 
. . . An agent who solves criminal cases. The major "detective" bureaus hired personnel out as bodyguards and muscle.

'''"There is but one 'case' which occupies us"''' 
This echoes the famous quote from Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'': "The world is all that is the case." (See the full text of the ''Tractatus'' [http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html here].) This quote also factors in heavily in V. (Specifically, in two places: there's the [http://www.phil-reed.com/2006/02/14/the-love-songs-of-thomas-pynchon/ P's and Q's love song], and also in Captain Weissman's repeating, encoded, hallucinated message over the telegraph in Africa.)

'''The Number 22''' 
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really. 22 is the number of cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, the section of the deck that has been removed from the modern playing deck which only has the suits (elements) and the Court cards. The 22 Major Arcana are numbers 0 to 21 and move from The Fool card to the Universe. Purportedly and symbolically, the progression of cards tell a tale of the evolutionary path of the Soul in its course. The 22 cards also, in some systems, map onto the 22 paths that connect the spheres of the Kabalistic Tree of Life (which also is mentioned in this chapter). An understanding of the Tarot cards cannot be achieved with an understanding how they relate to the Tree of Life. They are the relationships between the Sephiroths which in turn at 10 in number, just like the Tetractys and portray the energies that flow from the highest monad of Divinity (Kether) down into the manifested world (Malkuth). Pynchon makes use of both the Tarot and the Kabalah in Against the Day as well as Gravity's Rainbow.

See also the novel ''The Greater Trumps'' by Charles Williams for a similar intrusion of the characters of the Major Arcana into everyday English life.

==Page 223==

'''"And the crime... just what would be the nature of that?"''' 
Might Lew himself be one of the 22 suspects? Perhaps the ineffable crime is what made people treat him like a pariah earlier in the book.

==Page 224==

'''"'walking out'"''' 
A walking date.

'''the veil of ''maya''''' 
In Hinduism, maya is the phenomenal world of separate objects and people, which creates for some the illusion that it is the only reality. In Hindu philosophy, maya is believed to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self. Many philosophies or religions seek to "pierce the veil" in order to glimpse the transcendent truth. Arthur Schopenhauer used the term "Veil of Maya" to describe his view of ''The World as Will and Representation''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion) Wikipedia entry]

'''the ancient London landscape . . . known to the Druids''' 
Peter Ackroyd's recent ''London, the Biography'' devotes many pages to sacred and magical features of the city.

'''Trumper's''' 
London's royal barbers since 1875. [http://www.trumpers.com/ site]

'''On this island [...] all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted''' 
A sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Pynchon's December 2006 letter written in defense of novelist Ian McEwan: "Given the British genius for coded utterance..." [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/06/nwriter06.xml Image of Letter]

'''crosswords in newspapers''' 
The first crossword to appear in a newspaper was in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossword#History 1913]. Cryptic crosswords in British newspapers certainly match Pynchon's description. See, for example, [http://www.crossword.org.uk/listen.htm the Listener crossword].

==Page 225==

'''Girton College''' 
For women, founded 1869. [http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk/about/history/brief.html history]

'''Next they'll be letting you folks vote.''' 
Women were granted the right to vote in England in 1928.

'''Arthur Edward Waite''' 
Occultist and co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Waite Wikipedia]

'''four stone''' 
56 pounds.

'''Uckenfays''' 
Pig latin for 'fucken'. Or loosely "fuckin A", "fuckin awesome" [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Fuckin+A cite]

'''''gaver du visage''''' 
A literal translation of "stuff one's face", though this is not how it is said in French (it would be se gaver or se baffrer). [http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/g/gaver.htm cite]

'''cigar divan''' 
Tobacconist and/or smoking salon.

Interestingly, a work by Robert Louis Stevenson, from 1903, entitled The Dynamiter begins with a "Prologue of the Cigar Divan".

==Page 226==

'''Seven Dials''' 
bad area in London, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dials Wikipedia entry]

[[image:tarotdevil.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Devil by Colman-Smith]]

'''growler''' 
Four-wheeled [http://www.bbno.freeserve.co.uk/glossary.htm carriage] drawn by four horses. Supplanted by the Hansom cab.

<div id="renfrew"></div>'''Renfrew at Cambridge and Werfner at Göttingen''' 
Note that each Professor's name is the other's spelled backward.

Also notice the theme of dual natures or forces. The two professors are "bound and ... could not separate even if they wanted to." They become rivals within the broader conflict of the 'Great Game' -- the political rivalry over Central Asia being played out by the various European powers, but especially by Great Britain and the Russian Empire.

[http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambuniv/index.html Cambridge University] is one of the oldest and the best universities in the world. In 2009 it will be celebrating its 800th Anniversary. In its early day, Cambridge was a center of the new learning of the Renaissance and of the theology of the Reformation; in modern times it has excelled in science. It is now a confederation of 31 Colleges (such as King's, Girton, St.John, Trinity and others mentioned in ATD), consists of over 100 departments and faculties, and other institutions. Since 1904, 81 affiliates of Cambridge have won Nobel Prize in every category: 29 in Physics, 22 in Medicine, 19 in Chemistry, 7 in Economics, 2 in Literature and 2 in Peace.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-August_University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen Göttingen University], one of the most famous universities in Europe, founded in Göttingen, Germany, in 1737 by King George II of England in his capacity as Elector of Hanover. At the end of the 19th century, it became world famous because of its Departments of Mathematics and Physics and rivaled Cambridge for eminence. The reputation of the university was founded by many eminent professors who are commemorated by statues and plaques all over the campus. It claimed 44 Nobel Laureates. But it suffered from the 1933 Great Purge of the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish Physics" and never recovered its original fame.

'''Berlin Conference of 1878''' 
Divided Balkans after Russo-Turkish War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin Wikipedia]

'''English, . . . , Japanese—not to mention indigenous—components''' 
''Not to mention'' them was exactly the point as the Great Powers sorted out the Ottoman possessions.

==Page 227==

'''"The Great Game"''' 
The Great Game was a term used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The term was later popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, ''Kim''. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia entry] Also the name of Padzhitnoff's airship.

'''mamluk lamps''' 
[http://www.aucegypt.edu/academic/arabstudies/contact.html pic]

'''...the Kabbalist Tree of Life, with the names of the Sephiroth spelled out in Hebrew, which had brought her more than enough of that uniquely snot-nosed British anti-Semitism... ''' 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah Kabbalah] is the ancient study of Jewish mysticism, long shrouded in mystery and kept from all but a devout few of the most dedicated Talmudic scholars. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tree_of_Life_Medieval.jpg.jpg Tree of Life] is one of the central symbols of Kabbalah, supposedly a physical representation of the path of enlightenment from the most base knowledge of the physical world (at the bottom), to the highest spiritual planes of understanding (at the top). The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephirot Sephiroth] are the nodes of the Tree, representing the various "stages" of understanding. Of course, tihs is all a very gross oversimplifcation and hardly does justice to the term itself.

The "Quabbalah" or "Cabalah" being studied by Madonna and others in Hollywood is a secularized and co-opted form of the original Kabbalah, which is deeply connected to the Torah and Jewish life.

In Medieval Europe, Kabbalist scholars wore amulets and other symbols on their clothing, and were often misunderstood to be magicians or wizards (think Merlin). The common magician's expression "abra cadabra" has Kabbalistic origins.

'''"Eskimoff . . . I say what sort of name is that?"''' 
Tiptoeing around the real question, "Is she Jewish?"

'''English Rose''' 
Traditional English beauty.

==Page 228==

'''Oliver Lodge''' 
English physicist, inventor and writer (1851-1940) involved in the development of wireless telegraphy and radio. After the death of his son in 1915, Lodge became interested in spiritualism and life after death and wrote several books on the subject. Lodge conducted research on lightning, electricity, electromagnetism and wrote about the aether, themes that are repeated throughout ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Joseph_Lodge Wikipedia entry].

'''William Crookes''' 
English chemist and physicist (1832-1919) who worked in spectroscopy and whose work pioneered the construction and use of vacuum tubes. Like Oliver Lodge, Crookes was also a spiritualist, which appears to be Pynchon's reason for grouping him with others in this passage, although his experiments in electricity and light also tie in with these themes in ''ATD.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crookes Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Piper''' 
Probably [http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/piper.htm Leonora Piper] 1857-1950.

'''Eusapia Palladino''' 
(1854-1918) Famous italian spiritualist medium.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusapia_Palladino Wikipedia entry]. It's fair to say she was often caught cheating.

'''W.T. Stead''' 
William T. Stead (1849-1912), British writer, poet, social crusader, and spiritualist. He went down with the ''Titanic.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Stead Wikipedia entry].

'''Mrs. Burchell''' 
The Yorkshire Seeress, investigated by WT Stead. [http://www.wholeagain.com/prophecyfodor.html cite]

'''assassination''' 
Trouble with the time here. Lew's timeline points pretty strongly to autumn 1900. A séance that's "about to" go on Mme. Eskimoff's résumé, however, leads the murder of the Serbian king and queen by three months, and the murder itself occurred in June 1903, which seems to imply March of that year.

'''Alexander and Draga Obrenovich, the King and Queen of Serbia''' 
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Obrenovich Wikipedia] the assassination occured on 11 June 1903, so the seance at which Mrs. Burchell "witnessed" it, should have taken place in March 1903.

'''Parsons-Short Auxetophone''' 
[http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/auxetophone/auxetoph.htm pic and info]

'''electros of the original wax impressions''' 
A thin film of metal was electroplated onto the wax, then peeled off and wrapped around a new cylinder.

==Page 229==

'''syntonic''' 
A term used in both engineering and psychology. Psychology: "Characterized by a high degree of emotional responsiveness to the environment." Electricity: "Of or relating to two oscillating circuits having the same resonant frequency."

'''the Russo-Turkish War''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War,_1877–1878 The Russo-Turkish War] (1877-1878), the latest Russo-Turkish War of many fought between these two contries since 16th century as a result of Russian attempts to find an outlet on the Black Sea and to conquer the Caucasus, dominate the Balkan Peninsula, gain control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits, and retain access to world trade routes. The last Russo-Turkish War came as a result of the anti-Ottoman uprising (1875) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria. On Russian instigation, Serbia and Montenegro joined the rebels; after securing Austrian neutrality, Russia openly entered the War in 1877. The War ended in 1878 resulted in the Treaty of San Stefano which so thoroughly revised the map in favor of Russia and her client, Bulgaria, that the European powers called a conference (the Congress of Berlin) to revise its terms by the Treaty of Berlin.

==Page 230==

'''King's... Girton''' 
King's College is one of the most famous and historic colleges at Cambridge, founded in 1441. Girton College, Cambridge, was established in 1869 as the first residential college for women in England.

'''Michaelmas term''' 
The fall term, starting early October (1900 here). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaelmas_term Wikipedia]

'''tweeny''' 
Betweenmaid.

'''Edward Oxford''' 
attempted to shoot Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, at the time of her first pregnancy (1840).[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Oxford Wikipedia]

'''had the young Queen died then without issue''' 
Nookshaft posits two scenarios: (1) The implicit, unmentioned, and not as "interesting" possibility that everything is actual, as it "appears" to be in the "real" world, surrounding Queen Victoria; that she is simply an old, vain regent. (2) "the 'real' Vic is elsewhere," and the current, aged Victoria is a ghostly stand-in. Nookshaft implies that this figure is a proxy or puppet of Ernst-August. If this were "the case," then the question shifts to the following: (a) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive in cahoots with Ernst-August in the "real" world? or: (b) Is the ruler of the underworld, who holds the "real," eternally young Victoria captive NOT in cahoots with Ernst-August, who nevertheless ascends to the throne with real-Vic out of the way, and imposes the stand-in? In which case: What would be the motivation of the underworld-entity third-party? And who, or what, specifically, is it?

'''sixty years ago''' 
One event of 1840, the attempt on Victoria's life, is referred to as sixty years ago; another, the issue of the first adhesive stamps, as more than sixty years ago.

'''Salic law''' 
was a body of traditional law that codified policy on matters such as inheritance, crime, and murder. The British and Hanoverian thrones separated after the death of King William IV of the United Kingdom and of Hanover. Hanover practiced the Salic law, while Britain did not. King William's niece Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, but the throne of Hanover went to William's brother Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_Law Wikipedia entry]

'''Tory despotism''' 
Thatcher?
: Not necessarily-- it describes Ernest himself. "The Duke of Cumberland had a reputation as one of the least pleasant of the sons of George III. Politically an arch-reactionary, he opposed the 1828 Catholic Emancipation Bill proposed by the government of the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Augustus_I_of_Hanover Wikipedia entry]

'''Catholics''' 
Someone famously cited James Joyce as proof that Catholics shouldn't get university educations.

==Page 231==

'''Orange Lodges''' 
Lodges of the Orange Order, a protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly in Northern Ireland and Scotland. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_lodge Wikipedia entry]

'''"from the first to the twelfth of July, anniversaries of the Boyne and Aughrim."''' 
i.e. anniversaries of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Boyne Battle of the Boyne] and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aughrim Battle of Aughrim] of the Williamite War in Ireland.

[[Image:pennyblack.jpg|thumb|100px|right|The first adhesive stamp, 1840]]
'''"the first adhesive stamps of 1840"''' 
This stamp has come to be called the Penny Black. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black Wikipedia entry]

'''"immune to Time, [...] neither of them aging"''' 
Cf Wilde's ''Picture of Dorian Gray'', in which a painted portrait ages while its subject remains young.

'''springtide''' 
Cf Stray's pregnancy, a "dreamy thing" (page 201).

==Page 232==

'''Éliphaz Lévi''' 
A/K/A Eliphas Levi, ''nom de plume'' of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875), French occultist and writer who pioneered a revival of Magick in the 19th Century, and was an influence on A.E. Waite, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aleister Crowley. An acquaintance of novelist Edward ("It was a dark and stormy night") Bulwer-Lytton. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliphas_Levi Wikipedia entry].

'''punters''' 
Average people.

'''''akousmata''''' 
Greek for "things heard".

'''number twenty-four''' 
Or 25? [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gvp/gvp11.htm etext]

'''Iamblichus''' 
(ca. 245 - ca. 325, Greek) was a neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy, and perhaps western Paganism itself. He is perhaps best known for his compendium on Pythagorean philosophy.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichus_%28philosopher%29 Wikipedia]

'''maquillage''' 
French for makeup.

==Page 233==

'''Collis Brown's Mixture''' 
Contained morphine, chloroform, and caramel, among other things. [http://admin.safescript.com/drugcgic.cgi/DRUG?1006901319+0 Full ingredients]

'''xylene''' 
Xylene abuse is similar to "glue sniffing"-- xylene is a strong solvent able to cause several damages to health, especially to the brain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylene wikipedia]

'''a thousand pounds a year''' 
Over $100,000 today. [http://futureboy.homeip.net/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=1000&currency=pounds&fromYear=1900 cite]

'''"pinky"''' 
Condy's fluid is pink to purple. Methylated spirits is a kind of denatured alcohol: 95% ethyl alcohol, 5% methyl alcohol. "Pinky" would have a variety of effects, very possibly including blindness.

==Page 234==

'''Condy's fluid''' 
A disinfectant used to treat and prevent Scarlet Fever, among other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bollmann_Condy Wikipedia]

'''Cheapside''' 
an important market street in the City of London.

'''mews''' 
A street originally for stabling; but in modern times often converted into houses/apartments.

'''Coombs de Bottle''' 
"comes the bottle" ?

'''Russian duck''' 
Duck is strong, untwilled linen or cotton, lighter and finer than canvas. Russian duck is coarse, heavy and unbleached but softer than English duck.

==Page 235==

'''sensitive flames''' 
Cf GR p.29-32, 715.

'''extractors . . . distillation columns''' 
Separatory apparatus. An extractor works on differences in solubility, a distillation column differences in volatility.

'''tremblers and timers''' 
A trembler is a kind of motion detector used in both bombs and alarms; one kind has a flexible stem with a heavy contact on the free end so that disturbing the package it contains causes a trigger circuit to close. A timer uses a clocklike mechanism to bring two contacts together.

'''proper solvent procedures''' 
Famous 1960s "Anarchist Cookbook" was infamously inaccurate. [http://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-C-066-William-Powell/dp/0962303208 Amazon w/author's note]

==Page 236==

'''Breathless hush in the close tonight sort of thing''' 
Dr. De Bottle quoting from Henry Newbolt's poem "Vitaï Lampada," which makes school games a metaphor and model for martial bravery.

'''The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly''' 
Cf Hornung's 'Gentleman Thief' and cricket player, Raffles. [http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/hardknox.shtml info]

Reminds me of the Krikkit Robots in Douglas Adams' ''Life, The Universe, and Everything,'' where a bomb is put in place of a Cricket Ball at a match between Britain and Australia. 

Here and elswhere the spelling of the cricket ground should be 'Headingley'.

'''The Ashes''' 
An international cricket series between England and Australia dating back to 1882. [http://www.334notout.com/ashes/reports/report21.htm dates] A number of references in this chapter relate to this rivalry. For example, on this page the English cricket ball is compared to the Australian "kookaburra". Kookaburra is the brand name of the balls used in Australia, in England it's Duke. The properties of the English ball was one of the keys to England's success in the summer of 2005. Was Pynchon's writing here influenced by the hype in the UK at the time?

'''Phosgene''' 
A poison gas used in World War I.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene Wikipedia]

'''logwood''' 
Source of red dye. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logwood Wikipedia]

'''exhiliration''' 
Misspelling of ''exhilaration.''

==Page 237==

'''beige substance''' 
Presumably Cyclomite.

'''Happy Birthday! . . . Gemini''' 
Ordinarily you would think this tagged the date as 21 May to 20 June [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_%28astrology%29 Wikipedia.] But other evidence in the text points to autumn.

'''get the Ashes back . . . next year''' 
On page 236 the Ashes (Test Matches, cricket competitions between England and Australia) are "in progress." At some time previous to this conversation Mme. Eskimoff said England will regain the trophy "next year" provided they use the young bowler Bosanquet (next entry).

Test Matches took place in (a) December 1901 to March 1902, Australia victorious; (b) May to August 1902, Australia again; (c) December 1903 to March 1904, England getting the Ashes back and Bosanquet figuring as a key bowler. When are we?

'''Bosanquet''' 
Another Ashes reference. [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/9158.html Bernard Bosanquet] invented the bosie (or googly), as described here, around 1900. A major factor in England's 2005 Ashes success was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_swing reverse swing], another type of delivery whose physical dynamics are poorly understood.

'''Pom''' 
A term for a British person commonly used in Australian English.

'''Hebrew letter Shin''' 
Obviously a nod to the Vulcan greeting in ''Star Trek'', with the distinctive hand sign and the phrase, "Live long and prosper." Perhaps also to the Jewish faith of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. See [http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/v-salute.html The Jewish origin of the Vulcan Salute]

Pynchon placed one of these in ''Mason & Dixon'', as well:

:Dixon discovers "The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter ''Shin'' and to signify, 'Live long and prosper.'( M&D 485) 
Might there be a further connection between The Cohen of T.W.I.T., the "Cohens of Paris" and these backwoods Kabbalists?

Also, note the hand on the devil tarot card above.

==Page 238==

'''Second Law of Thermodynamics''' 
The law of entropy... "The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Rudolf Clausius) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics]

There's no such thing as a perfectly efficient engine, i.e., a box that does work by taking in heat from where there is lots of heat (e.g., combustion chamber) and throwing off heat where there is not much (exhaust pipe). Something always gets lost. Similarly, the transfer of money from where there is plenty (bank) to where there isn't much (Europe) is never perfectly efficient.

"He began then, bewilderingly, to talk about something called entropy. The word bothered him... But it was too technical for her. She did gather that there were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat engines, the other to do with communication... The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell's Demon. As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was offset by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where... Entropy is a figure of speech, then, a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow." ''The Crying of Lot 49'' (Pages 84 - 85)

'''''morsus fundamento''''' 
Latin: A bite on the ass?

The meaning is that he wouldn't know metaphysics if it bit him in the ass. Like "octogenarihexation" ("86"-ing) in Vineland--the vulgar faux fancied up.

'''three-percent consols''' 
British "consolidated" bonds, for many years the conservative investment ''par excellence.'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consols wikipedia]

==Page 239==

'''Colney Hatch''' 
London lunatic asylum. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colney_Hatch_Lunatic_Asylum Wikipedia]

'''Out of the dust . . . beam of morning sunlight''' 
I.e., sometimes your horse wins.

'''ENCYCLICAL''' 
An encyclical is a letter circulated by the pope or other figure of high authority in a body of believers. A comprehensive [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical Wikipedia article] explains and adds a list of papal encyclicals. An encyclical usually takes its first 2 or 3 words as its title (''Multi et Unus'' in this case).

Of course, the Vatican would strongly protest that McTaggart, an atheist, should send out an encyclical!

'''MCTAGGART . . . HARDY''' 
Seems to refer to a historical logician joke. [http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Science_Humor/1210.html explanation] Professor McTaggart was, perhaps, the most famous philosopher
who argued that Time did not exist as we seem to experience it.
W.H. Hardy was a very famous Cambridge mathematician who knew all the
famous philosophers in England. 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._E._McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis (J. M. E.) McTaggart] (1866-1925), British philosopher. He was born in London and educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured Philosophy at Trinity College from 1897 to 1923. His brilliant commentaries and studies on Hegel's dialectic (1896), cosmology (1901) and logic (1910) were preliminaries to his own constructive system-building in ''Nature of Existence'' (3 vols., 1921-1927). In his 1908 essay "The Unreality of Time" he argued that our perception of time is an illusion (Cf [[ATD_397-428#Page_412|page 412]]: dismissing . . . the ''existence'' of Time).

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Hardy.html Godfrey Harold Hardy] (1877-1947), English mathematician. He was a lecturer at Cambridge (1906-1919), professor at Oxford (1919-31) and Cambridge (1931-47). Concurrently with Wilhelm Weinberg developed Hardy-Weinberg law (1906) describing genetic distribution and dequilibrium in large populations. He was also known for contributions to complex analysis, Diophantine analysis, Fourier series, distribution of prime numbers, etc.

'''''Multi et Unus''''' 
Many and One.

'''CREATE MORE DUKES''' and '''EXPROPRIATE CHUCKERS''' 
Is the grafitti in Cambridge another cricketing reference? Dukes are the balls used in England (cf. p236). Chucking (or bending the arm when bowling) is an emotive topic in cricket that arises from time to time. It first arose around 1900 [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/258016.html]. In 2005 it caused administrators to change the rules of the game [http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/144358.html].

'''The Laplacian''' 
A bar in Cambridge.
::Are you saying it is a real establishment?

::Can't say it's a fact.

A ''Laplacian'' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplacian Wikipedia entry]) is a differential operator named after Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827), a famous French mathematician. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace Wikipedia entry for Laplace]

:Yesyes, but is/was there a real public house named "The Laplacian"?

:Not during ''my'' stay in Cambridge (1998-2000). Also not today, according to [http://www.cambridgepubs.com/alphabetical/ this] list.

==Page 240==

'''Worse than Gordon at Khartoum''' 
Refers to Charles George Gordon, British Major-General, whose attempted defense of Khartoum versus Arabi rebels in 1884-85 ended with his beheading. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_George_Gordon Wikipedia] cf. Basil Dearden's 1966 film ''Khartoum'', in which the role of Gordon is played by Charlton Heston.

==Page 241==

'''"You recognize him?"''' 
As, presumably, Webb.
:How can that be? Webb is dead, there's nothing to suggest he went to England, the costume is not right for him, and—most tellingly—his medium is dynamite, not phosgene.
:Who might Lew recognize in the photo? The "suspects" are Neville, Nigel, the Grand Cohen, Dr. Coombs De Bottle, Clive Crouchmas and Professor Renfrew. If Prof. Werfner looks much like Prof. Renfrew, he goes on the list too. If the "Gentleman Bomber" is allowed to be possibly female, add Yashmeen and Mme. Eskimoff. We haven't met anyone else (except members of the Icosadyad, who don't have faces).
:Suppose we rule out the ladies and Werfner. Neville or Nigel wouldn't be able to hide their identities with a suit of white flannels. Renfrew is sitting right there when Lew sees the picture, but Lew's reaction (his stomach sinks) does not seem Lew-like if it's Renfrew he has recognized. The Cohen, De Bottle and Crouchmas are left.
:Would Lew experience dread on spotting Crouchmas? He doesn't know much about C.C. at this point, so it isn't clear why he would suppress that recognition.
:Seeing the Cohen might lead to this gastric reaction: Lew might think he's on the fringe of an anarchist group again (and look where it got him the last time). The Cohen stays on the list.
:Dr. De Bottle not only follows cricket but bets on it; he speaks almost with reverence about phosgene; he knows a nonobvious fact about the bombs; and he dresses like a gentleman. None of these points applies to the Cohen. And recognizing De Bottle would give Lew that sinking feeling because D.B. is purportedly fighting against bombers on behalf of the government.
:De Bottle goes to the top of the short list.

'''A bosie from a beamer''' 
More cricket! A bosie is now more commonly known as a googly (cf. p237). A beamer is a full-pitched delivery that reaches the batsman above waist height.

==Page 242==

[[Image:globenorth.gif|thumb|150px|The northern hemisphere]]

'''''unheimlich''''' 
German: uncanny, sinister.

 

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 199-218

2007-03-17T21:02:14Z

Gobbag: /* Page 207 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 199==

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary]

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family.

==Page 202==

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell".

'''Cooper'''

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his
great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

A Cooper is also a barrel-maker.

On the other hand, Cooper is blonde and blue-eyed, whereas Pynchon has dark brown hair and dark eyes, as near as can be made out from the photos that exist.

Then there is Gary Cooper, debonair American movie star.

A Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

This is all far too tenous and speculative, surely?

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
"Bucking the tiger" is an old euphemism for playing faro. [http://www.bcvc.net/faro/history.htm bcvc.net]

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

Pynchon must be laughing his tits off at some of this stuff. "Soul to soul" and "down Mexico way" are just expressions - that's how they found their way into songs. TRP is a bright guy and if he'd wanted for some reason to allude to Stevie Ray and Jimi at this particular point (why, for god's sake?) he'd have found a more satisfying way of doing it.

''Down Mexico Way'' was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMdb. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang
the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
From Hebrew: desolation. Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

There seem to be differences between commentators as to whether Jeshimon refers to a specific place or not (although the broad consensus is that it doesn't, but see for instance [http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Jeshimon NetBible]). So Jeshimon may or may not be an actual place but is certainly not pleasant to be in, befitting the mysterious, anarchic town of death in AtD

==Page 208==

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

Reef learns in chatting with the Rev that even certain "accommodations", technically subornation, could be made "for a price" risking "an appropriate fate", i.e. death for money [from the Rev?] even here.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]).

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

'''"Just greasy ashes by the trailside."''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke."

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's gun, introduced on page 88.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 199-218

2007-03-17T21:01:28Z

Gobbag: /* Page 207 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 199==

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary]

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family.

==Page 202==

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell".

'''Cooper'''

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his
great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

A Cooper is also a barrel-maker.

On the other hand, Cooper is blonde and blue-eyed, whereas Pynchon has dark brown hair and dark eyes, as near as can be made out from the photos that exist.

Then there is Gary Cooper, debonair American movie star.

A Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

This is all far too tenous and speculative, surely?

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
"Bucking the tiger" is an old euphemism for playing faro. [http://www.bcvc.net/faro/history.htm bcvc.net]

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

Pynchon must be laughing his tits off at some of this stuff. "Soul to soul" and "down Mexico way" are just expressions - that's how they found their way into songs. TRP is a bright guy and if he'd wanted for some reason to allude to Stevie Ray and Jimi at this particular point (why, for god's sake?) he'd have found a more satisfying way of doing it.

''Down Mexico Way'' was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMdb. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang
the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
From Hebrew: desolation. Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

There seem to be differences between commentators as to whether Jeshimon refers to a specific place or not (although the broad consensus is that it doesn't, but see [http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Jeshimon NetBible]). So Jeshimon may or may not be an actual place but is certainly not pleasant to be in, befitting the mysterious, anarchic town of death in AtD

==Page 208==

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

Reef learns in chatting with the Rev that even certain "accommodations", technically subornation, could be made "for a price" risking "an appropriate fate", i.e. death for money [from the Rev?] even here.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]).

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

'''"Just greasy ashes by the trailside."''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke."

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's gun, introduced on page 88.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 199-218

2007-03-17T21:00:01Z

Gobbag: /* Page 207 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 199==

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary]

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family.

==Page 202==

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell".

'''Cooper'''

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his
great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

A Cooper is also a barrel-maker.

On the other hand, Cooper is blonde and blue-eyed, whereas Pynchon has dark brown hair and dark eyes, as near as can be made out from the photos that exist.

Then there is Gary Cooper, debonair American movie star.

A Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

This is all far too tenous and speculative, surely?

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
"Bucking the tiger" is an old euphemism for playing faro. [http://www.bcvc.net/faro/history.htm bcvc.net]

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

Pynchon must be laughing his tits off at some of this stuff. "Soul to soul" and "down Mexico way" are just expressions - that's how they found their way into songs. TRP is a bright guy and if he'd wanted for some reason to allude to Stevie Ray and Jimi at this particular point (why, for god's sake?) he'd have found a more satisfying way of doing it.

''Down Mexico Way'' was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMdb. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang
the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
From Hebrew: desolation. Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

There seem to be differences between commentators as to whether Jeshimon refers to a specific place or not (see [http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Jeshimon NetBible]). So Jeshimon may or may not be an actual place but is certainly not pleasant to be in, befitting the mysterious, anarchic town of death in AtD

==Page 208==

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

Reef learns in chatting with the Rev that even certain "accommodations", technically subornation, could be made "for a price" risking "an appropriate fate", i.e. death for money [from the Rev?] even here.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]).

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

'''"Just greasy ashes by the trailside."''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke."

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's gun, introduced on page 88.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 199-218

2007-03-16T17:51:34Z

Gobbag: /* Page 206 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 199==

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary]

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family.

==Page 202==

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell".

'''Cooper'''

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his
great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

A Cooper is also a barrel-maker.

On the other hand, Cooper is blonde and blue-eyed, whereas Pynchon has dark brown hair and dark eyes, as near as can be made out from the photos that exist.

Then there is Gary Cooper, debonair American movie star.

A Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

This is all far too tenous and speculative, surely?

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
"Bucking the tiger" is an old euphemism for playing faro. [http://www.bcvc.net/faro/history.htm bcvc.net]

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

Pynchon must be laughing his tits off at some of this stuff. "Soul to soul" and "down Mexico way" are just expressions - that's how they found their way into songs. TRP is a bright guy and if he'd wanted for some reason to allude to Stevie Ray and Jimi at this particular point (why, for god's sake?) he'd have found a more satisfying way of doing it.

''Down Mexico Way'' was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMdb. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang
the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
From Hebrew: desolation. Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

==Page 208==

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

Reef learns in chatting with the Rev that even certain "accommodations", technically subornation, could be made "for a price" risking "an appropriate fate", i.e. death for money [from the Rev?] even here.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]).

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

'''"Just greasy ashes by the trailside."''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke."

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's gun, introduced on page 88.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 199-218

2007-03-16T17:40:13Z

Gobbag: /* Page 205 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 199==

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary]

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family.

==Page 202==

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell".

'''Cooper'''

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his
great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

A Cooper is also a barrel-maker.

On the other hand, Cooper is blonde and blue-eyed, whereas Pynchon has dark brown hair and dark eyes, as near as can be made out from the photos that exist.

Then there is Gary Cooper, debonair American movie star.

A Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

This is all far too tenous and speculative, surely?

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
"Bucking the tiger" is an old euphemism for playing faro. [http://www.bcvc.net/faro/history.htm bcvc.net]

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

''Down Mexico Way'' was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMdb. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang
the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
From Hebrew: desolation. Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

==Page 208==

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

Reef learns in chatting with the Rev that even certain "accommodations", technically subornation, could be made "for a price" risking "an appropriate fate", i.e. death for money [from the Rev?] even here.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]).

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

'''"Just greasy ashes by the trailside."''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke."

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's gun, introduced on page 88.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 199-218

2007-03-16T17:26:40Z

Gobbag: /* Page 203 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 199==

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary]

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family.

==Page 202==

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell".

'''Cooper'''

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his
great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

A Cooper is also a barrel-maker.

On the other hand, Cooper is blonde and blue-eyed, whereas Pynchon has dark brown hair and dark eyes, as near as can be made out from the photos that exist.

Then there is Gary Cooper, debonair American movie star.

A Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

This is all far too tenous and speculative, surely?

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
???

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

''Down Mexico Way'' was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMdb. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang
the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
From Hebrew: desolation. Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

==Page 208==

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

Reef learns in chatting with the Rev that even certain "accommodations", technically subornation, could be made "for a price" risking "an appropriate fate", i.e. death for money [from the Rev?] even here.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]).

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

'''"Just greasy ashes by the trailside."''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke."

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's gun, introduced on page 88.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

Talk:ATD 199-218

2007-03-16T17:00:18Z

Gobbag: New page: P201: "pigeons" - as in stoolpigeons? ~~~~

P201: "pigeons" - as in stoolpigeons? [[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 10:00, 16 March 2007 (PDT)

ATD 199-218

2007-03-16T16:52:39Z

Gobbag: /* Page 200 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 199==

==Page 200==

'''Nochecita''' 
Spanish: little night.

'''Estrella''' 
Spanish: star. In New World Spanish the middle syllable is pronounced just about like "Stray."
:and in Old World Spanish too

The name of a character in Dickens' ''Great Expectations.''

==Page 201==
'''natatorium''' 
New Englandish word for "swimming pool" - see [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=natatorium Online Etymology Dictionary]

'''Family idiot... some emergency drooling done''' 
Frank the self-professed Frankenstein of the Traverse family.

==Page 202==

'''V-twin with white rubber tires''' 
A V-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a V configuration, most often seen in motorcycles. The first motorcycles available for purchase were made in 1894 by Hildebrand & Wolfmüller.

'''notes... rang like schoolbells''' 
Recalls the lyrics from the famous 1958 Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode": "But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell".

'''Cooper'''

In the spirit of Icelandic Spar doubling, is it possible that the description of 'young gent Cooper' is Pynchon writing himself into ATD? Pynchon is reportedly shy and one of the supposed reasons given for why he never wanted his picture taken was that his upper teeth protruded and he did not like his portrait. Cooper sits astride a black and gold V-twin (!), produces a "Cornell" model Acme guitar, 'which now and then found strange notes added into the guitar chords, as though Cooper had hit between the wrong frets, only somehow it sounded right,' a pretty good analogy of Pynchon's bizarre but powerful prose style. Cf. Pynchon and his music connections and the trope (from Homer on) of musicians as the archetypal artists. Pynchon reportedly played the ukulele, so perhaps he also plays guitar. Perhaps this Cooper is an amalgam of himself and his
great deceased school friend, Richard Farina?

A Cooper is also a barrel-maker.

On the other hand, Cooper is blonde and blue-eyed, whereas Pynchon has dark brown hair and dark eyes, as near as can be made out from the photos that exist.

Then there is Gary Cooper, debonair American movie star.

A Peter Cooper wrote an early book on Pychon's signs and symbols.

==Page 203==

'''Cooper, cont'd'''

If Cooper ''is'' meant as some kind of parallel of Pynchon, note that Cooper waits "for faces there, or a particular face, to be drawn by the music," and one is-- Sage, who exits the house wearing gray and puts her arm up Cooper's sleeve. Could this be Pynchon's loving memory of meeting his wife?

==Page 204==

'''Linnet Dawes''' 
The linnet is ''Carpodacus mexicanus,'' most often called house finch. The species originated in the western U.S. but got spread through the east as a result of releases by bird smugglers. Also a European finch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnet Wikipedia]

She is named for two birds. The daw or jackdaw is an Old World bird somewhat resembling the crow in appearance and the grackle in behavior.

==Page 205==

'''against the daylight''' 
A direct example of ''against the day'' as ''against the light''. Significantly, Frank's attempt to discern Stray's true facial expression is thwarted by the daylight behind her. An object positioned against the daylight, or, in general, between an observer and a light source, is shadowed or silhouetted -- in Pynchon's words of the same sentence, "veiled by its own penumbra". This is suggestive of the idea that light does not always illuminate.

'''"faro boxes"''' 
Card game with anti-cheating mechanism that can be fixed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game) Wikipedia.] In fact, faro was a big moneymaker—for the house—because rigging the shoe or box was so common.

'''ol' Buck-the-Tiger''' 
???

==Page 206==

'''soul-to-soul''' and '''down Mexico way''' 
Possible allusions to blues-rock guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix, respectively. The first phrase was the title of a Vaughan album and the second is a phrase used in the song "Hey Joe," most famously recorded by Hendrix.

''Down Mexico Way'' was, before "Hey Joe", a 1941 Western movie starring Gene Autry. See IMdb. Frank Sinatra was perhaps the most famous person who sang
the title song, a hit in 1953, (when TRP was 15), "South of the Border, down Mexico Way."

'''both sounders and inkers''' 
Two types of telegraph machine. Inkers turn telegraph signals into marks along long ribbons of paper, while sounders only made sounds through a speaker, requiring a human to write down the message.

'''one day it rang while Reef happened to be right next to it''' 
Someone who knew Pynchon in the 60s described their final meeting in the article, [http://theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]: "I was walking down the street and he was walking toward me. Our paths crossed right in front of a pay phone, our eyes met and we recognized each other. I asked how he was and at that moment the telephone rang. He looked at me and looked at the phone, then turned around and ran down the street, and I never saw him again."

At the 70s pot-commune 'The Farm' in Tennessee, their first phone system (called 'Beatnik Bell') was legendary for working this way (by ESP). [http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/albertbates/akbp1b.html more]

'''a turbulent bath of noise that could have been fragments of speech or music surged along the lines''' 
A possible imagistic allusion to the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, specifically their 1948 book ''A Mathematical Theory of Communication''. Shannon and Weaver were engineers working for Bell Systems who posited that information traffic through telephone systems could best be described in mathematical terms normally reserved for the flow of ''turbulent fluids''. Their work, along with that of Norbert Wiener, founds the basis of the American branch of information theory. Wikipedia citations for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon Shannon] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Weaver Weaver], and for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory information theory].

We know from the introduction to Slow Learner that Pynchon read (some--two books mentioned) Norbert Wiener while still in college.

==Page 207==

'''"Bob Meldrum"''' 
1920s outlaw. [http://www.museumnwco.org/lookBackArticle.php?lookBackID=35 cite]

'''Jeshimon''' 
From Hebrew: desolation. Apparently not the name of a real town. Utahans are known to name towns with words from scripture, though. In the Mormon book of 1 Nephi, the patriarch Lehi is reported to have migrated with his family through a wilderness. D. Kelly Ogden ("Answering the Lord's Call," ''Studies in Scripture,'' vol. 7, Salt Lake, Deseret Book, 1987) notes that the remotest kind of wilderness would have been called jeshimon. In ''God and the American Writer,'' Alfred Kazin quotes the Puritan preacher Increase Mather (in "The Mystery of Israel's Salvation") as saying, "God hath led us into a wilderness, and surely it was not because the Lord hated us but because he loved us that he brought us hither into this Jeshimon." He may, however, have been referring to Massachusetts.

==Page 208==

==Page 209==

'''"every telegraph pole had a corpse hanging from it"''' 
very reminiscent of the heads on poles in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an important text for GR.... "worst town Reef ever rode into". And the Belgian Congo, the setting for most of Conrad's novella, is mentioned in "AtD" in terms of the cruelty and exploitation of colonialism. The image of the corpses on telegraph-poles reminds me of a similar image in Stephen King's "The Stand".

'''Towers of Silence''' 
The Towers of Silence (also dakhma or dokhma or doongerwadi) are circular raised structures used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence Wikipedia]

==Page 210==

Reef learns in chatting with the Rev that even certain "accommodations", technically subornation, could be made "for a price" risking "an appropriate fate", i.e. death for money [from the Rev?] even here.

'''more churches here than saloons''' 
A comment on the utility of organized religion in maintaining civilization.

All those churches don't seem to have much effect on civilization...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:17, 24 February 2007 (PST)

== Page 211 ==

'''arnophilia''' 
A word invented by Pynchon. According to this [http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=19&Issue=6&ArticleID=5 website] the greek word ''arnos'' generally refers to a lamb or sheep, but occasionally to a goat, too. Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- Wikipedia]

Given Pynchon's penchant for low humor, this is also likely to be a reference to a very old joke: Salesman blows into remote Western town, asks bartender, "What do you do for, um, amusement hereabouts?" Bartender says "We fuck sheep". Salesman after a few days finds a sheepfold and soon finds himself surrounded by(in different versions) (1)laughing locals, who say "You picked an ugly one" (2) deputies, who arrest him saying "That's the Sheriff's girl". This joke was ancient when I heard it in the late 1950s.

'''Lourdes''' 
city in France of Blessed Virgin appearances in the late 1800s to a youth and supposed miraculous cures since. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes Wikipedia entry]

'''a kind of winged God''' 
in various depictions, Satan appears as an angel/godlike-creature with huge wings. One of the most famous examples would be Milton's "Paradise Lost", especially Books 1 and 2.

Also, Satan is depicted as winged in the Rider-Waite Tarot

==Page 212==

'''The upside down star''' 
The upside down star, also known as the ''inverted pentagram,'' (with "two horns exalted"), is an emblem of the Devil.

In ''Mason and Dixon,'' the upside-down star is a symbol of two things that are connected: 1) when M&D are trying to find true north, they look at stars in their telescope to measure when they reach the peak of their arc arcoss the sky. In the telescope the star is upside down. Thus, upside down stars symbolize points which cut through distortion. 2) The star is seen again and again on rifles of both Dutch and American design. They pop up around slavery, a massacre, and an Iron refinery used for making impliments of slavery and war. The rifle is much like a telescope, but differs in that it shoots lead rather then huge sweaping cuts across the landscape. But they are both acts that are branded by evil.

'''apelike trudge''' 
If you suspect someone is the devil, you watch their gait. Cloven hooves inside his boots?

'''Flagg''' 
In several Stephen King novels, including The Stand, Randall Flagg is an evil antichrist-like character.

==Page 213==

'''''Quieres un cloque''''' 
Spanish: You want a grapple.

'''dusk's reassembly of the broken day''' 
Broken by heat, reassembled as it cools. Or, dusk
bringing darkness, night--"it's always night"--after
another broken day...another 'against the day' allusion?

==Page 214==

'''stole a horse''' 
Reef probably he left in such a hurry, rapelling down "the blood-red wall", that he did not try to find his own horse or felt the Marshall might have gotten to it. Possibly, but unlikely, that TRP 'forgot' about the horse Reef came in on.

'''the McElmo''' 
Watershed territory in Utah and Colorado.

'''an ancient people whose name no one knew''' 
No one knows what the Anasazi or ancient pueblo people called themselves. The name Anasazi is Navaho, ''anaasázi'': enemy ancestors, but most Anglos think it means something like "ancient ones."

'''"Each explosion was like the text of another sermon"''' 
Cf. "That gun will replace your tongue, and your poetry will be now written with blood" - Nobody towards William Blake, from 1995 movie ''Dead Man'' by Jim Jarmusch ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0112817/ IMDb], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man Wikipedia])

'''voice of the thunder''' 
Twelfth Song of the Thunder

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice below,
The voice of the grasshopper
Among the plants
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.

[From Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, 1887]

Voice of the Thunder is also the title of a book by Laurens Van der Post
championing the life of the Australian Aborigines.

And the fifth and final section of T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' is entitled "What the Thunder Said".

'''''The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth''''' 
Not to be confused with ''The Chums of Chance in the Bowels of the Earth'', mentioned at the end of Part 1 ([[ATD_97-118#Page_117|page 117]]).

'''[the book], already dog-eared" 
A contributor has mentioned a possible connection to Pugnax, but Pugnax was a neat reader, unlike Reef.
The book was "dog-eared" when Reef got it and I think the connection is to the word and the meaning of reading dogs like Pugnax and the one in Mason & Dixon.

Or, simply, that the book was dog-eared. (One doesn't always need to create connections where they may not exist.) --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 02:27, 24 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 215==

[[image:bridalveilfalls.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Bridal Veil Falls (c) [http://www.stevegarufi.com/bridal-veil-falls-colorado.htm ColoradoGuy.com]]]

'''"running a game of chance without a license" 
The use of the word 'chance' here is probably no accident. Perhaps this implies that only the Chums of Chance can run a game of chance? Only the author of the Chums books has "[poetic] license? Cf. 'Great Game'and chance.

Or it is simply a game of chance (ie, gambling).

:It seems to be simply tapping on the irony that Reef's being busted for running an unlicensed game of chance is what leads him to discovering a book about the Chums of Chance. Does he just discover the book on the floor of the cell? Ha. [[User:Greenlantern|Greenlantern]] 17:21, 28 February 2007 (PST)

'''North Cape and Franz Josef Land''' 
North Cape, Norway, is one of the northernmost points of Europe. Franz Josef Land is an archipelago in the Arctic Circle that was discovered in 1873 by Austrian polar explorers and named in honour of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. Today it belongs to Russia.

'''While reading, "he enjoyed a sort of dual existence"''' 
Spar and splitting theme? Pynchon on fiction and readers of? The magic of reading fiction and how it can transport you to other worlds?

Much like the boy Bastian in mid-80's children's fantasy film ''The Neverending Story'' [http://imdb.com/title/tt0088323/ IMdb entry]

'''Sleeping Ute''' 
Ute or Sleeping Ute Mountain is near Cortez.

'''Bridal Veil Falls''' 
Waterfall near Telluride, Colorado. At 431 feet, Bridal Veil Falls is Colorado's tallest. The historic structure between the two falls is the former Smuggler-Union hydroelectric plant, which provided Telluride's electricity from 1904 until 1954. [http://www.jeffblaylock.com/window/2004/06/bridal_veil_fal/index.php source]

==Page 216==

'''"Just greasy ashes by the trailside."''' 
Cf. p. 10, "tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke."

'''disrespect''' 
Corruption setting in?

'''Joe Hill''' 
1879-1915, immigrant from Sweden, labor organizer and Wobbly ideologue, executed (after being framed) in Utah. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill See the Wikipedia article.]

==Page 217==

'''in country you don't know how to get back in from''' 
A recurring idea, that you can go somewhere and not be able to get back.

'''Confederate Colt''' 
Webb's Uncle Fletcher's gun, introduced on page 88.

==Page 218==

'''God . . . laying on tells''' 
"Tell" is poker slang for any signal a player gives that other players can exploit.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 171-198

2007-03-13T19:40:17Z

Gobbag: /* Page 184 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 171==

[[image:kenosha-kid.jpg|thumb|125px|"The Kenosha Kid" by Forbes Parkhill (Aug 1931) 
[http://themodernword.com/pynchon/Pynchon_kenosha_kid.html Full text and images at The Modern Word]|right]]'''Kieselguhr Kid''' 
Dynamite, a blasting explosive, was invented in 1867 by Alfred P. Nobel by mixing nitroglycerin with kieselguhr.

The name also recalls the Kenosha Kid sequence of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', which may have taken its name from a 1931 pulp fiction story by Forbes Parkhill, a two-fisted wild west adventure.

'''...detective agencies like Pinkerton‘s and Thiel‘s''' 
see Wikipedia Entries [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Detective_Agency 1],[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Detective_Service_Company 2]

'''reaction of 1849''' 
Acts of European governments to suppress the widespread liberal revolutions of 1848. The reaction impelled many people to emigrate to the U.S.

'''Sangre de Cristos''' 
southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangre_De_Cristo_Mountains Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 172==

'''Couple dozen, in big bandoliers across his chest''' 
Similar to the way suicide bombers in the Middle East wear their munitions?

'''Uncompahgre''' 
The Uncompahgre Plateau in Colorado.

'''Butch Cassidy''' 
infamous outlaw [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Cassidy Wikipedia Entry]

'''Dr. Lombroso''' 
Born in Verona, Italy, Dr. Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), using concepts drawn from Physiognomy, early Eugenics, Psychiatry and Social Darwinism, devised the theory that criminality was inherited, and that the born criminal could be identified by physical defects, which confirmed a criminal as savage, or atavistic; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Lombroso Wikipedia entry]

'''Lodazal''' 
spanish for bog, quagmire (?)

==Page 173==

'''"got us a man of principle"''' 
Eerily reminiscent of Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, the convicted American murderer known for his campaign of mail bombings, many of which were addressed to specific victims, intended by Kaczynski to draw attention to what he percieved as the ills of technology on modern society. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber Wikipedia entry].

There a several tenuous threads of connection between Pynchon and the Unabomber. Pynchon has written works exploring the dangers of modern technology and, more specifically, ludditism. [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html] [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html] As a young man, Pynchon co-wrote such a play, ''Minstral Island'', with his Cornell classmate Kirkpatrick Sale, who later would become one of the world's most prominent and outspoken luddites. Sale later said, "The Unabomber and I share a great many views about the pernicious effect of the Industrial Revolution, the evils of modern technologies, the stifling effect of mass society, the vast extent of suffering in a machine-dominated world and the inevitability of social and environmental catastrophe if the industrial system goes unchecked," although naturally Sale condemned the Unabomber's method. When the Unabomber's identity was still unknown, Pynchon was suggested (with who knows what degree of seriousness, and by whom) as a possible suspect. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon#1990s_and_2000s]

'''"jizzmatic juices backin' up, putting pressure on the brain" 
'Jizzmatic juices' seems to be a Pynchon-created slang phrase for semen, adapted from the dictionary-found slang word for semen, "jism". Pynchon has "a lady acquaintence" of Mr. Ponghill as responsible for the "naive theory" [Lew Basnight], commonly-enough held, that lack of sex
--"lack of exposure to the fair sex", previous paragraph--can affect the brain and therefore one's judgment.

:Actually you can find the term "jizz" at the [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jizz Urban Dictionary] - [[User:Ctsats|Ctsats]] 12:49 GMT+2, 26 January 2007

'''"Don't mean he ain't got a right to his privacy."''' 
Continues the Unabomber/Pynchon connection. Pynchon follows the description of a dynamite bomber with the right to privacy, something that Pynchon has guarded closely for his entire life. For more on Pynchon and privacy, see [[ATD_26-56#Page_37|page 37]].

==Page 174==

'''back to the campfires of his youth, only then it was God didn't have a name''' 
"What is God's name?" or "What is God's first name?" was a topic that reliably led adolescent boys to yatter pointlessly on for hours when their adult leaders wanted to be left alone in camp.

'''"your own brother"''' 
The Unabomber was turned in by his brother. ("Kaczynski" means 'ducky' or 'duckman'. Did TRP hide this somewhere?)

==Page 175==
'''"Only slowly would it occur to his ultra-keen detective's reasoning that these bombs could have been set by anybody, including those who would clearly benefit if "Anarchists", however loosely defined, could be blamed for it."''' 
Is this an(other) allusion to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_demolition_hypothesis_for_the_collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center Controlled demolition hypothesis] for the collapse of the WTC? Cf. a similar reference in [[ATD_81-96#Page_85|page 85]] and the discussion therein.

Pynchon seems to be a smart enough guy to not believe such ridiculious theories. It's all too easy to read into these true historical events (the short-lived period of anarchist bombings of the late 19th and early 20 centuries) similitudes with more recent events, but the context in AtD is clear enough that this sort of speculation seems to be nothing more than speculation. Of course, that's the fodder for conspiracy theorists...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 04:40, 21 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 176==

'''"the Powers, who always had more dwarves waiting, even eagerly, to be sent below."''' 
A Tolkien-inspired imagery? Dwarfs figure prominently into Norse mythology and fantasy works before Tolkien, but Tolkien supposedly began the use of the spelling, "dwarves," employed here. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf Wikipedia entry on Dwarf]

'''Tortoni's on Arapahoe''' 
Italian restaurant located in the 1500 block of Arapahoe Street in downtown Denver. [http://www.rootsweb.com/~codenver/miracle/104.htm Photo]

'''Gahan's saloon across the street from City Hall''' 
Saloon operated by William Gahan, a Denver City Councilman, and his brothers conveniently located at 1401 Larimer Street in Denver, across the street from City Hall. Gahan operated two other saloons, including one at 1133 Larimer Street, which he supposedly kept open on Sundays, harbored gambling, and sponsored a boys' baseball team that played for beer.

'''Ed Chase, the boss of the red-light district''' 
Edward "Big Ed" Chase (1838-1921) was a New Yorker from Saratoga Springs who became the leader of criminal activities in Denver from 1860 on, and as such was an influential and respected man. He ran saloons, gambling houses, bordellos, and theaters (specializing in "burlesque"), and served on the Denver City Council from 1866-1869. After that, he was a behind-the-scenes ward boss and power broker for the Republican party, which dominated Denver politics at the time. Nearly every 19th century election in Denver was clouded by charges that Chase had organized an army of voters out of riffraff, vagrants, prostitutes, barflies and gamblers. By the time of his death in 1921, Chase had come to be regarded as a respected real estate investor and capitalist. For more info, consult ''The City & The Saloon: Denver 1858-1918'' by Thomas J. Noel.

'''"another little Haymarket"''' 
On May 4th 1886 a workers' protest meeting was held at the West Randolph Street Haymarket in Chicago. A bomb was thrown at the police, the police opened fire and many officers and protesters were killed ([http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/571.html chicagohistory.org])

==Page 177==

'''The Row''' 
Denver‘s red light district developed along McGaa Street (subsequently renamed Holladay and then Market Street) [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3951/is_200010/ai_n8908963 1] [http://www.womenof.com/Articles/d011899.asp 2]

==Page 178==

'''W.F.M.''' 
Western Federation of Miners [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Federation_of_Miners Wikipedia Entry]

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
The Klan itself was not in its heyday at the time this episode took place, and not only is it unlikely that the Klan would have shown itself at the time, but also that it would have been this far west. The "modern" Klan was only reformed in 1915. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Wikipedia]. IN the 1920s, Colorado woulod become a stronghold of the "modern" Klan.

'''heeled''' 
Carrying a sidearm. (The word also means "having money," but here the first meaning is pretty clear.)

==Page 179==

'''Clovis Yutts''' 
"Yutz" is a slang word (from Yiddish) for a clueless goof.

'''different tempos and keys''' 
Cf 'anarchist miracle' in "Lot 49" (chapter 5).

In the early 1970s San Francisco was the site of the Black Flag Concerts, where anybody was allowed to make any music. People who attended said it was disorienting to wander through the crowd listening to folk singers, kazoo bands and Celtic harpists all belting away. (The Black Flag is a traditional emblem of anarchism.)

Also perhaps a reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ives Charles Ives], who wrote much music containing combatting sections in different keys, tempi and melody. The quintessential image of Ives' music is that of four marching bands playing different tunes arriving at the same village square. Ives attended Yale, though graduated in 1898, two years prior to the scene beginning on page 156.

Or perhaps just an image of musical anarchy to match the political Anarchism.

==Page 180==

'''Valley Tan''' 
Mormon whiskey reported by Mark Twain. [http://historytogo.utah.gov/salt_lake_tribune/in_another_time/091795.html cite]

==Page 182==

'''faded into the mobility''' 
"Mobility" also appears in ''Mason & Dixon.'' The word was later shortened to "mob."

'''"kept wasting Agency money rattling off one telegram after another."''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from a letter by novelist Raymond Chandler to Jamie Hamilton, 21 March 1949:
:"I remember several years ago when Howard Hawks was making ''The Big Sleep'', the movie, he and Bogart got into an argument as to whether one of the characters was murdered or commited suicide. They sent me a wire (there's a joke about this too) asking me, and dammit I didn't know either. Of course I got hooted at. The joke was in connection with Jack Warner, the head of Warner Bros. Believe it or not, he saw the wire, the wire cost the studio 70 cents, and he called Hawks up and asked him whether it was really necessary to send a telegram about a point like that. That's one way to run a business." (''The Raymond Chandler Papers'', ed. by Tom Hiney and Frank McShane, Penguin 2001, p. 105)

'''P.E.T.N.''' 
The explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate. Ingredient of Semtex, discovered 1891. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETN Wikipedia]

'''Dr. Oyswharf''' 
Perhaps a reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley Owsley Stanley], wizard of LSD in the 1960s in San Francisco, and sound man for the Grateful Dead. (There is a Grateful Dead song entitle Wharf Rat.) Owsley, also known as "Bear", made the best 'cid of the times, and was a colorful character, eating almost nothing but meat, eggs and cheese.

Also: "Oysvarf" in Yiddish means, literally, vomitus; An "oysvarf" translates roughly as "a little puke".

'''mixtures of nitro compounds and polymethylenes''' 
Nitro compounds include TNT, nitroglycerine and many other explosives. Polymethylenes are probably polymethylene waxes used as stabilizers or desensitizers.

'''"The wallpaper in particular presented not a repeating pattern at all"''' 
Cf. Lucius Sheppard's 1985 short story ''The Fundamental Things'', where a lady starts translating her wallpaper pattern to Hebrew.

The connection between explosives and psychedelics is apparently not based in chemistry but it has appeared elsewhere in popular culture. The 1967 James Bond spoof ''Casino Royale'' has a scene where pillowcases are inflated with a psychedelic gas, a fuse is attached, and a powerful explosion is the result.

==Page 183==

[[image:beaver-on-the-brain.jpg|thumb|Beaver on the Brain T-Shirt|right]]'''Yes we're Beavers of the Brain... 
This little hallucinated ditty, sung by "a race of very small but perfectly visible inhabitants" of Lew Basnight's steak, is reminiscent of "We Represent the Lollipop Guild" sung by three tough-looking Munchkin boys in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz_%281939_film%29 ''The Wizard of Oz''] (1939). "Beavers of the Brain" also brings to mind the phrase "Beaver on the brain" (describing a horny male or, perhaps, lesbian) which even adorns t-shirts (see right).

'''Keep that Bulldog in your pocket...''' 
A "Bulldog" is a small, "snubbie" revolver, with a very high power-to-weight ratio, perfect for carrying in the pocket as a concealed weapon.

'''Cyclomite''' 
A spelling error may lead to the idea that cyclomite is a name for the explosive RDX; that's cyclo'''n'''ite.

:I don't think this is a spelling error. Connects with dynomite. No way.

'''plasticerator''' 
Plasti-, moldable (in this case chewable); cera- related to Latin ''cera'' = wax, ''cerumen'' = earwax; -ator, an agent to modify a product. The word "plasticerator" does not seem to have caught on. It would not be a failed synonym for "plasticizer," an agent to make rigid plastics pliable.

==Page 184==

'''Kankakee''' 
city in Illinois.

'''things would happen gradually enough to afford time to do something about it''' 
A central idea in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', which features a rocket that breaks the sound barrier and thus the ability to kill you before you hear it coming.

'''the world turned all inside out''' 
This passage describes acid flashbacks.
:It's certainly written so as to suggest acid flashbacks but it's describing Lew's experience of being blown up

==Page 185==

'''Trilby hat''' 
Named after George du Maurier's 1894 novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilby Trilby]. du Maurier was a good friend of Henry James, who may have been miffed at the extraordinary success that this novel had, compared to James' own works.

'''excursion''' 
Wilde's US lecture tour was in 1882.

==Page 186==

'''"Like a Red Indian Stonehenge!" - "Only different!"''' 
Cf. " 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170). See also [[ATD_119-148#Page_133| page 133]].

[[image:hangedman.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Hanged Man by Colman-Smith]]
'''''grifa''''' 
Marijuana. [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grifa cite]

'''Miss Colman-Smith is West Indian [tarot cards]''' 
Pamela Colman Smith (1878—1951) was an artist, illustrator, and writer. She is best known for designing the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of tarot cards for Arthur Edward Waite. Smith was born in England, the daughter of an American merchant from Brooklyn, Charles Edward Smith and his Jamaican wife Corinne Colman. Due to her father’s job with the West India Improvement Company, the family often moved, spending time in London, Kingston, Jamaica and Brooklyn, New York. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith Wikipedia entry]

Pynchon's interest in the tarot is evident in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. Two tarot cards are referred to here -- the Hanged Man ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider-Waite image]) and the Knight of Swords ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_arcana#Swords image]). The reference is an anachronism, as the deck wasn't published until 1909.

'''''espadas . . . copas''''' 
Spanish: Swords, Cups. The Tarot suits corresponding to spades and clubs.

'''Querent''' 
Latin: one who asks. The subject of a Tarot reading (in some settings, the mark).

'''Perseid''' 
"The shower is visible from mid-July each year, but the bulk of its activity falls between August 8 and 14 with a peak on August 12. During the peak, rates of a hundred or more meteors per hour can be registered." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseid Wikipedia]

==Page 187==

'''hell of a blow-up . . . . maiden's sigh''' 
Possible allusion to the testing of Trinity Bomb, the first explosion of an atomic weapon, which took place at White Sands, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_test Wikipedia].

see Anti-Stone, p. 78-79.

'''A second Moon''' 
On page 144, the Inconvenience is described as a "misplaced moon".

'''Galveston''' 
In the summer of 1900 Galveston was a major seaport; many of its cotton warehouses still stand. In the 19th century it was a port of entry for immigrants from Germany, Bohemia, the Balkans and elsewhere. The 1900 hurricane was the making of Houston, a few dozen miles up slow-flowing Buffalo Bayou—which was turned into the Ship Channel within a few years.

==Page 188==

'''Galveston Hurricane''' 
An historical event (8th September 1900, 6000 dead).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_Hurricane_of_1900 [Wikipedia]]

'''...before that frightful bomb brought you to us?''' 
Perhaps an allusion to and rhetorical parallel of the "wake-up bomb" of the 9/11 attacks, and the relative increase of attention paid by the American media and public to such post-9/11 disasters as the slaughter of citizens in the Afghan and Iraq offensives, the destruction wrought by the South Asian tsunami, the displacement of the "hidden" poor of the Gulf States by Hurricane Katrina, the carnage of the earthquake in Iran, the rampant and still-raging genocides of Sudan, and so on.

'''neuræsthenic''' 
This is the second appearance of the word (the first was on page 83). Neurasthenia was a kind of catch-all at the time for what today would be called depression, fatigue, anxiety, etc.

==Page 189==

'''Fireman Jim Flynn''' 
The nickname undoubtedly comes from railroading, not firefighting.

==Page 190==

'''blue northers''' 
In the West, the Plains and down to Texas, a blue norther is a fast-moving weather front with lightning, rain and wind, followed by a rapid drop in temperature.

==Page 191==

==Page 192==

'''nearly twenty''' 
1883 + 19yo = 1902?

'''stamps beating''' 
Breaking ore into small pieces in preparation for refining.

==Page 193==

'''Uncompahgre''' 
A Plateau in Western Colorado, named after the Uncompahgre Ute Indian Tribe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncompahgre_%28disambiguation%29 [Wikipedia]]

'''absorbed . . . re-emission . . . fluorescence of vindictiveness''' 
In a fluorescent tube, invisible ultraviolet radiation from the electrical discharge is absorbed by "phosphors" on the inside of the glass. The UV excites the phosphor atoms, which then—instead of giving off ultraviolet of their own—re-emit the energy at a different wavelength, one that is visible.

'''not since the aught-one strike''' 
So 1901 is in the past.

'''three-dollar sack suit''' 
That is, a suit one might buy at a store where one fills a sack with clothes and then pays three dollars for the lot.
A sack suit is an ordinary 19th-c. business suit which "evolved into the modern three piece suit."
[http://www.lahacal.org/gentleman/sack.html source]

==Page 194==

'''the fish at that table''' 
The player whose money the others mean to take.

'''Dallas Divide''' 
Mountain Pass dividing the Uncompahgre Plateau from the San Juan Mountains. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Divide [Wikipedia]]

==Page 195==

'''Sloat Fresno''' 
Possibly named for Commodore John D. Sloat ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Sloat Wikipedia entry]), American naval officer who claimed California, then a territory of Mexico, as part of the United States on July 7, 1846. The text of the declaration can be found [http://www.dmwv.org/mexwar/documents/sloat.htm here]. Another source may be the Sloat Lumber Co. of Quincy, CA, which used an uncommon 30 gauge track, about which all I can find is [http://members.tripod.com/~Sloat_Lumber_Co/PROTOTYP.HTM here]. Fresno is presumably a reference to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresno%2C_CA city in California], though its direct relation to either the Commodore or the Sloat Lumber Co. is unclear.

Sloat is another term for slat, a narrow piece of wood. Fresno is Spanish for ash.

'''copping the borax''' 
? Seemingly a term invented by Pynchon. No idea what it means, but borax is a mineral used in detergent, pottery, a lots of other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borax Wikipedia on Borax]

"Borax" is a slang word for cheap, poorly made products. Makers of borax for use in cleansing apparently used to give away junky items as premiums. If you look at it the other way around, "borax" could mean a premium, hence an enlistment bonus. "Copping" of course is getting something by underhand means.

'''Montrose''' 
Montrose, CO. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montrose%2C_Colorado [Wikipedia]]

'''li'l buddy''' 
Brings to mind Gilligan and the Skipper from ''Gilligan's Island'': Sloat, like the Skipper, is twice his buddy's size; in both pairs, it is uncertain just who is whose sidekick; and the Skipper referred to Gilligan by, "li'l buddy."

==Page 196==

'''red liquor''' 
Colored liquor, such as bourbon or whiskey.

==Page 197==

'''Sloat tending to bodies, Deuce... the spirit''' 
Again, the body/soul dichotomy. See [[ATD_97-118#Page_101|page 101]] and [[The_World_is_at_Fault|The World is at Fault]] letter by Pynchon.

[[image:couplingpin.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Coupling pin]]'''coupling pin''' See photo.

==Page 198==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Repeats the title of Part One. May also suggest Tesla's 03 July 1899 'vision' ([[ATD_97-118#Page_97|page 97]]). May also be tied to the light/dark theme running through parts of the book thus far: light over the (dark) ranges. Note the concurrence of the leitmotives light-time-water in the sentence "He watched the light over the ranges slowly draining away". The image of "draining light" might also hint at the wave-particle duality.

'''Jeshimon''' 
Literally: "the waste", more specifically the wilderness of Judah in the Bible, near the Dead Sea. [http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/jeshimon.html christiananswers.net]. Fuller annotation at [[ATD_199-218#Page_209|page 209.]]

'''Cortez''' 
In far southwestern Colorado near the Utah state line.

'''shadow had taken the immeasurable plain''' 
Contrasts "the light over the ranges". Possibly an allusion to Sodom and Gomorrah, the "cities of the plain" in Genesis 19, in which the angels advise Lot and his family: "do not look back and do not stop anywhere in the Plain. Flee to the hills or you will be swept away" (19:17). ''The cities of the plain'', is also the title of i) the translated fourth volume of Proust's ''A la recherche du temps perdu'' (original title ''Sodome et Gomorrhe'') and ii) Cormac McCarthy's third novel of ''The Border Trilogy''.

This is the third possible reference to Proust so far. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_165|page 165]], and [[#Page_188|page 188]].

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 171-198

2007-03-02T19:18:15Z

Gobbag: /* Page 179 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 171==

[[image:kenosha-kid.jpg|thumb|125px|"The Kenosha Kid" by Forbes Parkhill (Aug 1931) 
[http://themodernword.com/pynchon/Pynchon_kenosha_kid.html Full text and images at The Modern Word]|right]]'''Kieselguhr Kid''' 
Dynamite, a blasting explosive, was invented in 1867 by Alfred P. Nobel by mixing nitroglycerin with kieselguhr.

The name also recalls the Kenosha Kid sequence of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', which may have taken its name from a 1931 pulp fiction story by Forbes Parkhill, a two-fisted wild west adventure.

'''...detective agencies like Pinkerton‘s and Thiel‘s''' 
see Wikipedia Entries [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Detective_Agency 1],[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Detective_Service_Company 2]

'''reaction of 1849''' 
Acts of European governments to suppress the widespread liberal revolutions of 1848. The reaction impelled many people to emigrate to the U.S.

'''Sangre de Cristos''' 
southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangre_De_Cristo_Mountains Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 172==

'''Couple dozen, in big bandoliers across his chest''' 
Similar to the way suicide bombers in the Middle East wear their munitions?

'''Uncompahgre''' 
The Uncompahgre Plateau in Colorado.

'''Butch Cassidy''' 
infamous outlaw [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Cassidy Wikipedia Entry]

'''Dr. Lombroso''' 
Born in Verona, Italy, Dr. Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), using concepts drawn from Physiognomy, early Eugenics, Psychiatry and Social Darwinism, devised the theory that criminality was inherited, and that the born criminal could be identified by physical defects, which confirmed a criminal as savage, or atavistic; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Lombroso Wikipedia entry]

'''Lodazal''' 
spanish for bog, quagmire (?)

==Page 173==

'''"got us a man of principle"''' 
Eerily reminiscent of Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, the convicted American murderer known for his campaign of mail bombings, many of which were addressed to specific victims, intended by Kaczynski to draw attention to what he percieved as the ills of technology on modern society. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber Wikipedia entry].

There a several tenuous threads of connection between Pynchon and the Unabomber. Pynchon has written works exploring the dangers of modern technology and, more specifically, ludditism. [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html] [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html] As a young man, Pynchon co-wrote such a play, ''Minstral Island'', with his Cornell classmate Kirkpatrick Sale, who later would become one of the world's most prominent and outspoken luddites. Sale later said, "The Unabomber and I share a great many views about the pernicious effect of the Industrial Revolution, the evils of modern technologies, the stifling effect of mass society, the vast extent of suffering in a machine-dominated world and the inevitability of social and environmental catastrophe if the industrial system goes unchecked," although naturally Sale condemned the Unabomber's method. When the Unabomber's identity was still unknown, Pynchon was suggested (with who knows what degree of seriousness, and by whom) as a possible suspect. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon#1990s_and_2000s]

'''"jizzmatic juices backin' up, putting pressure on the brain" 
'Jizzmatic juices' seems to be a Pynchon-created slang phrase for semen, adapted from the dictionary-found slang word for semen, "jism". Pynchon has "a lady acquaintence" of Mr. Ponghill as responsible for the "naive theory" [Lew Basnight], commonly-enough held, that lack of sex
--"lack of exposure to the fair sex", previous paragraph--can affect the brain and therefore one's judgment.

:Actually you can find the term "jizz" at the [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jizz Urban Dictionary] - [[User:Ctsats|Ctsats]] 12:49 GMT+2, 26 January 2007

'''"Don't mean he ain't got a right to his privacy."''' 
Continues the Unabomber/Pynchon connection. Pynchon follows the description of a dynamite bomber with the right to privacy, something that Pynchon has guarded closely for his entire life. For more on Pynchon and privacy, see [[ATD_26-56#Page_37|page 37]].

==Page 174==

'''back to the campfires of his youth, only then it was God didn't have a name''' 
"What is God's name?" or "What is God's first name?" was a topic that reliably led adolescent boys to yatter pointlessly on for hours when their adult leaders wanted to be left alone in camp.

'''"your own brother"''' 
The Unabomber was turned in by his brother. ("Kaczynski" means 'ducky' or 'duckman'. Did TRP hide this somewhere?)

==Page 175==
'''"Only slowly would it occur to his ultra-keen detective's reasoning that these bombs could have been set by anybody, including those who would clearly benefit if "Anarchists", however loosely defined, could be blamed for it."''' 
Is this an(other) allusion to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_demolition_hypothesis_for_the_collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center Controlled demolition hypothesis] for the collapse of the WTC? Cf. a similar reference in [[ATD_81-96#Page_85|page 85]] and the discussion therein.

Pynchon seems to be a smart enough guy to not believe such ridiculious theories. It's all too easy to read into these true historical events (the short-lived period of anarchist bombings of the late 19th and early 20 centuries) similitudes with more recent events, but the context in AtD is clear enough that this sort of speculation seems to be nothing more than speculation. Of course, that's the fodder for conspiracy theorists...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 04:40, 21 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 176==

'''"the Powers, who always had more dwarves waiting, even eagerly, to be sent below."''' 
A Tolkien-inspired imagery? Dwarfs figure prominently into Norse mythology and fantasy works before Tolkien, but Tolkien supposedly began the use of the spelling, "dwarves," employed here. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf Wikipedia entry on Dwarf]

'''Tortoni's on Arapahoe''' 
Italian restaurant located in the 1500 block of Arapahoe Street in downtown Denver. [http://www.rootsweb.com/~codenver/miracle/104.htm Photo]

'''Gahan's saloon across the street from City Hall''' 
Saloon operated by William Gahan, a Denver City Councilman, and his brothers conveniently located at 1401 Larimer Street in Denver, across the street from City Hall. Gahan operated two other saloons, including one at 1133 Larimer Street, which he supposedly kept open on Sundays, harbored gambling, and sponsored a boys' baseball team that played for beer.

'''Ed Chase, the boss of the red-light district''' 
Edward "Big Ed" Chase (1838-1921) was a New Yorker from Saratoga Springs who became the leader of criminal activities in Denver from 1860 on, and as such was an influential and respected man. He ran saloons, gambling houses, bordellos, and theaters (specializing in "burlesque"), and served on the Denver City Council from 1866-1869. After that, he was a behind-the-scenes ward boss and power broker for the Republican party, which dominated Denver politics at the time. Nearly every 19th century election in Denver was clouded by charges that Chase had organized an army of voters out of riffraff, vagrants, prostitutes, barflies and gamblers. By the time of his death in 1921, Chase had come to be regarded as a respected real estate investor and capitalist. For more info, consult ''The City & The Saloon: Denver 1858-1918'' by Thomas J. Noel.

'''"another little Haymarket"''' 
On May 4th 1886 a workers' protest meeting was held at the West Randolph Street Haymarket in Chicago. A bomb was thrown at the police, the police opened fire and many officers and protesters were killed ([http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/571.html chicagohistory.org])

==Page 177==

'''The Row''' 
Denver‘s red light district developed along McGaa Street (subsequently renamed Holladay and then Market Street) [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3951/is_200010/ai_n8908963 1] [http://www.womenof.com/Articles/d011899.asp 2]

==Page 178==

'''W.F.M.''' 
Western Federation of Miners [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Federation_of_Miners Wikipedia Entry]

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
The Klan itself was not in its heyday at the time this episode took place, and not only is it unlikely that the Klan would have shown itself at the time, but also that it would have been this far west. The "modern" Klan was only reformed in 1915. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Wikipedia]

'''heeled''' 
Carrying a sidearm. (The word also means "having money," but here the first meaning is pretty clear.)

==Page 179==

'''Clovis Yutts''' 
"Yutz" is a slang word (from Yiddish) for a clueless goof.

'''different tempos and keys''' 
Cf 'anarchist miracle' in "Lot 49" (chapter 5).

In the early 1970s San Francisco was the site of the Black Flag Concerts, where anybody was allowed to make any music. People who attended said it was disorienting to wander through the crowd listening to folk singers, kazoo bands and Celtic harpists all belting away. (The Black Flag is a traditional emblem of anarchism.)

Also perhaps a reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ives Charles Ives], who wrote much music containing combatting sections in different keys, tempi and melody. The quintessential image of Ives' music is that of four marching bands playing different tunes arriving at the same village square. Ives attended Yale, though graduated in 1898, two years prior to the scene beginning on page 156.

Or perhaps just an image of musical anarchy to match the political Anarchism.

==Page 180==

'''Valley Tan''' 
Mormon whiskey reported by Mark Twain. [http://historytogo.utah.gov/salt_lake_tribune/in_another_time/091795.html cite]

==Page 182==

'''faded into the mobility''' 
"Mobility" also appears in ''Mason & Dixon.'' The word was later shortened to "mob."

'''"kept wasting Agency money rattling off one telegram after another."''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from a letter by novelist Raymond Chandler to Jamie Hamilton, 21 March 1949:
:"I remember several years ago when Howard Hawks was making ''The Big Sleep'', the movie, he and Bogart got into an argument as to whether one of the characters was murdered or commited suicide. They sent me a wire (there's a joke about this too) asking me, and dammit I didn't know either. Of course I got hooted at. The joke was in connection with Jack Warner, the head of Warner Bros. Believe it or not, he saw the wire, the wire cost the studio 70 cents, and he called Hawks up and asked him whether it was really necessary to send a telegram about a point like that. That's one way to run a business." (''The Raymond Chandler Papers'', ed. by Tom Hiney and Frank McShane, Penguin 2001, p. 105)

'''P.E.T.N.''' 
The explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate. Ingredient of Semtex, discovered 1891. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETN Wikipedia]

'''Dr. Oyswharf''' 
Perhaps a reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley Owsley Stanley], wizard of LSD in the 1960s in San Francisco, and sound man for the Grateful Dead. (There is a Grateful Dead song entitle Wharf Rat.) Owsley, also known as "Bear", made the best 'cid of the times, and was a colorful character, eating almost nothing but meat, eggs and cheese.

'''mixtures of nitro compounds and polymethylenes''' 
Nitro compounds include TNT, nitroglycerine and many other explosives. Polymethylenes are probably polymethylene waxes used as stabilizers or desensitizers.

'''"The wallpaper in particular presented not a repeating pattern at all"''' 
Cf. Lucius Sheppard's 1985 short story ''The Fundamental Things'', where a lady starts translating her wallpaper pattern to Hebrew.

The connection between explosives and psychedelics is apparently not based in chemistry but it has appeared elsewhere in popular culture. The 1967 James Bond spoof ''Casino Royale'' has a scene where pillowcases are inflated with a psychedelic gas, a fuse is attached, and a powerful explosion is the result.

==Page 183==

'''Cyclomite''' 
A spelling error may lead to the idea that cyclomite is a name for the explosive RDX; that's cyclo'''n'''ite.

'''plasticerator''' 
Plasti-, moldable (in this case chewable); cera- related to Latin ''cera'' = wax, ''cerumen'' = earwax; -ator, an agent to modify a product. The word "plasticerator" does not seem to have caught on. It would not be a failed synonym for "plasticizer," an agent to make rigid plastics pliable.

==Page 184==

'''Kankakee''' 
city in Illinois.

'''things would happen gradually enough to afford time to do something about it''' 
A central idea in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', which features a rocket that breaks the sound barrier and thus the ability to kill you before you hear it coming.

'''the world turned all inside out''' 
This passage describes acid flashbacks.

==Page 185==

'''Trilby hat''' 
Named after George du Maurier's 1894 novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilby Trilby]. du Maurier was a good friend of Henry James, who may have been miffed at the extraordinary success that this novel had, compared to James' own works.

'''excursion''' 
Wilde's US lecture tour was in 1882.

==Page 186==

'''"Like a Red Indian Stonehenge!" - "Only different!"''' 
Cf. " 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170). See also [[ATD_119-148#Page_133| page 133]].

[[image:hangedman.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Hanged Man by Colman-Smith]]
'''''grifa''''' 
Marijuana. [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grifa cite]

'''Miss Colman-Smith is West Indian [tarot cards]''' 
Pamela Colman Smith (1878—1951) was an artist, illustrator, and writer. She is best known for designing the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of tarot cards for Arthur Edward Waite. Smith was born in England, the daughter of an American merchant from Brooklyn, Charles Edward Smith and his Jamaican wife Corinne Colman. Due to her father’s job with the West India Improvement Company, the family often moved, spending time in London, Kingston, Jamaica and Brooklyn, New York. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith Wikipedia entry]

Pynchon's interest in the tarot is evident in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. Two tarot cards are referred to here -- the Hanged Man ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider-Waite image]) and the Knight of Swords ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_arcana#Swords image]). The reference is an anachronism, as the deck wasn't published until 1909.

'''''espadas . . . copas''''' 
Spanish: Swords, Cups. The Tarot suits corresponding to spades and clubs.

'''Querent''' 
Latin: one who asks. The subject of a Tarot reading (in some settings, the mark).

'''Perseid''' 
"The shower is visible from mid-July each year, but the bulk of its activity falls between August 8 and 14 with a peak on August 12. During the peak, rates of a hundred or more meteors per hour can be registered." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseid Wikipedia]

==Page 187==

'''hell of a blow-up . . . . maiden's sigh''' 
Possible allusion to the testing of Trinity Bomb, the first explosion of an atomic weapon, which took place at White Sands, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_test Wikipedia].

see Anti-Stone, p. 78-79.

'''A second Moon''' 
On page 144, the Inconvenience is described as a "misplaced moon".

'''Galveston''' 
In the summer of 1900 Galveston was a major seaport; many of its cotton warehouses still stand. In the 19th century it was a port of entry for immigrants from Germany, Bohemia, the Balkans and elsewhere. The 1900 hurricane was the making of Houston, a few dozen miles up slow-flowing Buffalo Bayou—which was turned into the Ship Channel within a few years.

==Page 188==

'''Galveston Hurricane''' 
An historical event (8th September 1900, 6000 dead).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_Hurricane_of_1900 [Wikipedia]]

'''...before that frightful bomb brought you to us?''' 
Perhaps an allusion to and rhetorical parallel of the "wake-up bomb" of the 9/11 attacks, and the relative increase of attention paid by the American media and public to such post-9/11 disasters as the slaughter of citizens in the Afghan and Iraq offensives, the destruction wrought by the South Asian tsunami, the displacement of the "hidden" poor of the Gulf States by Hurricane Katrina, the carnage of the earthquake in Iran, the rampant and still-raging genocides of Sudan, and so on.

'''neuræsthenic''' 
This is the second appearance of the word (the first was on page 83). Neurasthenia was a kind of catch-all at the time for what today would be called depression, fatigue, anxiety, etc.

==Page 189==

'''Fireman Jim Flynn''' 
The nickname undoubtedly comes from railroading, not firefighting.

==Page 190==

'''blue northers''' 
In the West, the Plains and down to Texas, a blue norther is a fast-moving weather front with lightning, rain and wind, followed by a rapid drop in temperature.

==Page 191==

==Page 192==

'''nearly twenty''' 
1883 + 19yo = 1902?

'''stamps beating''' 
Breaking ore into small pieces in preparation for refining.

==Page 193==

'''Uncompahgre''' 
A Plateau in Western Colorado, named after the Uncompahgre Ute Indian Tribe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncompahgre_%28disambiguation%29 [Wikipedia]]

'''absorbed . . . re-emission . . . fluorescence of vindictiveness''' 
In a fluorescent tube, invisible ultraviolet radiation from the electrical discharge is absorbed by "phosphors" on the inside of the glass. The UV excites the phosphor atoms, which then—instead of giving off ultraviolet of their own—re-emit the energy at a different wavelength, one that is visible.

'''not since the aught-one strike''' 
So 1901 is in the past.

'''three-dollar sack suit''' 
That is, a suit one might buy at a store where one fills a sack with clothes and then pays three dollars for the lot.
A sack suit is an ordinary 19th-c. business suit which "evolved into the modern three piece suit."
[http://www.lahacal.org/gentleman/sack.html source]

==Page 194==

'''the fish at that table''' 
The player whose money the others mean to take.

'''Dallas Divide''' 
Mountain Pass dividing the Uncompahgre Plateau from the San Juan Mountains. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Divide [Wikipedia]]

==Page 195==

'''Sloat Fresno''' 
Possibly named for Commodore John D. Sloat ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Sloat Wikipedia entry]), American naval officer who claimed California, then a territory of Mexico, as part of the United States on July 7, 1846. The text of the declaration can be found [http://www.dmwv.org/mexwar/documents/sloat.htm here]. Another source may be the Sloat Lumber Co. of Quincy, CA, which used an uncommon 30 gauge track, about which all I can find is [http://members.tripod.com/~Sloat_Lumber_Co/PROTOTYP.HTM here]. Fresno is presumably a reference to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresno%2C_CA city in California], though its direct relation to either the Commodore or the Sloat Lumber Co. is unclear.

Sloat is another term for slat, a narrow piece of wood. Fresno is Spanish for ash.

'''copping the borax''' 
? Seemingly a term invented by Pynchon. No idea what it means, but borax is a mineral used in detergent, pottery, a lots of other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borax Wikipedia on Borax]

"Borax" is a slang word for cheap, poorly made products. Makers of borax for use in cleansing apparently used to give away junky items as premiums. If you look at it the other way around, "borax" could mean a premium, hence an enlistment bonus. "Copping" of course is getting something by underhand means.

'''Montrose''' 
Montrose, CO. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montrose%2C_Colorado [Wikipedia]]

'''li'l buddy''' 
Brings to mind Gilligan and the Skipper from ''Gilligan's Island'': Sloat, like the Skipper, is twice his buddy's size; in both pairs, it is uncertain just who is whose sidekick; and the Skipper referred to Gilligan by, "li'l buddy."

==Page 196==

'''red liquor''' 
Colored liquor, such as bourbon or whiskey.

==Page 197==

'''Sloat tending to bodies, Deuce... the spirit''' 
Again, the body/soul dichotomy. See [[ATD_97-118#Page_101|page 101]] and [[The_World_is_at_Fault|The World is at Fault]] letter by Pynchon.

[[image:couplingpin.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Coupling pin]]'''coupling pin''' See photo.

==Page 198==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Repeats the title of Part One. May also suggest Tesla's 03 July 1899 'vision' ([[ATD_97-118#Page_97|page 97]]). May also be tied to the light/dark theme running through parts of the book thus far: light over the (dark) ranges. Note the concurrence of the leitmotives light-time-water in the sentence "He watched the light over the ranges slowly draining away". The image of "draining light" might also hint at the wave-particle duality.

'''Jeshimon''' 
Literally: "the waste", more specifically the wilderness of Judah in the Bible, near the Dead Sea. [http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/jeshimon.html christiananswers.net]. Fuller annotation at [[ATD_199-218#Page_209|page 209.]]

'''Cortez''' 
In far southwestern Colorado near the Utah state line.

'''shadow had taken the immeasurable plain''' 
Contrasts "the light over the ranges". Possibly an allusion to Sodom and Gomorrah, the "cities of the plain" in Genesis 19, in which the angels advise Lot and his family: "do not look back and do not stop anywhere in the Plain. Flee to the hills or you will be swept away" (19:17). ''The cities of the plain'', is also the title of i) the translated fourth volume of Proust's ''A la recherche du temps perdu'' (original title ''Sodome et Gomorrhe'') and ii) Cormac McCarthy's third novel of ''The Border Trilogy''.

This is the third possible reference to Proust so far. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_165|page 165]], and [[#Page_188|page 188]].

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 171-198

2007-03-02T19:02:00Z

Gobbag: /* Page 176 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 171==

[[image:kenosha-kid.jpg|thumb|125px|"The Kenosha Kid" by Forbes Parkhill (Aug 1931) 
[http://themodernword.com/pynchon/Pynchon_kenosha_kid.html Full text and images at The Modern Word]|right]]'''Kieselguhr Kid''' 
Dynamite, a blasting explosive, was invented in 1867 by Alfred P. Nobel by mixing nitroglycerin with kieselguhr.

The name also recalls the Kenosha Kid sequence of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', which may have taken its name from a 1931 pulp fiction story by Forbes Parkhill, a two-fisted wild west adventure.

'''...detective agencies like Pinkerton‘s and Thiel‘s''' 
see Wikipedia Entries [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Detective_Agency 1],[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Detective_Service_Company 2]

'''reaction of 1849''' 
Acts of European governments to suppress the widespread liberal revolutions of 1848. The reaction impelled many people to emigrate to the U.S.

'''Sangre de Cristos''' 
southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangre_De_Cristo_Mountains Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 172==

'''Couple dozen, in big bandoliers across his chest''' 
Similar to the way suicide bombers in the Middle East wear their munitions?

'''Uncompahgre''' 
The Uncompahgre Plateau in Colorado.

'''Butch Cassidy''' 
infamous outlaw [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Cassidy Wikipedia Entry]

'''Dr. Lombroso''' 
Born in Verona, Italy, Dr. Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), using concepts drawn from Physiognomy, early Eugenics, Psychiatry and Social Darwinism, devised the theory that criminality was inherited, and that the born criminal could be identified by physical defects, which confirmed a criminal as savage, or atavistic; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Lombroso Wikipedia entry]

'''Lodazal''' 
spanish for bog, quagmire (?)

==Page 173==

'''"got us a man of principle"''' 
Eerily reminiscent of Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, the convicted American murderer known for his campaign of mail bombings, many of which were addressed to specific victims, intended by Kaczynski to draw attention to what he percieved as the ills of technology on modern society. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber Wikipedia entry].

There a several tenuous threads of connection between Pynchon and the Unabomber. Pynchon has written works exploring the dangers of modern technology and, more specifically, ludditism. [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html] [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html] As a young man, Pynchon co-wrote such a play, ''Minstral Island'', with his Cornell classmate Kirkpatrick Sale, who later would become one of the world's most prominent and outspoken luddites. Sale later said, "The Unabomber and I share a great many views about the pernicious effect of the Industrial Revolution, the evils of modern technologies, the stifling effect of mass society, the vast extent of suffering in a machine-dominated world and the inevitability of social and environmental catastrophe if the industrial system goes unchecked," although naturally Sale condemned the Unabomber's method. When the Unabomber's identity was still unknown, Pynchon was suggested (with who knows what degree of seriousness, and by whom) as a possible suspect. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon#1990s_and_2000s]

'''"jizzmatic juices backin' up, putting pressure on the brain" 
'Jizzmatic juices' seems to be a Pynchon-created slang phrase for semen, adapted from the dictionary-found slang word for semen, "jism". Pynchon has "a lady acquaintence" of Mr. Ponghill as responsible for the "naive theory" [Lew Basnight], commonly-enough held, that lack of sex
--"lack of exposure to the fair sex", previous paragraph--can affect the brain and therefore one's judgment.

:Actually you can find the term "jizz" at the [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jizz Urban Dictionary] - [[User:Ctsats|Ctsats]] 12:49 GMT+2, 26 January 2007

'''"Don't mean he ain't got a right to his privacy."''' 
Continues the Unabomber/Pynchon connection. Pynchon follows the description of a dynamite bomber with the right to privacy, something that Pynchon has guarded closely for his entire life. For more on Pynchon and privacy, see [[ATD_26-56#Page_37|page 37]].

==Page 174==

'''back to the campfires of his youth, only then it was God didn't have a name''' 
"What is God's name?" or "What is God's first name?" was a topic that reliably led adolescent boys to yatter pointlessly on for hours when their adult leaders wanted to be left alone in camp.

'''"your own brother"''' 
The Unabomber was turned in by his brother. ("Kaczynski" means 'ducky' or 'duckman'. Did TRP hide this somewhere?)

==Page 175==
'''"Only slowly would it occur to his ultra-keen detective's reasoning that these bombs could have been set by anybody, including those who would clearly benefit if "Anarchists", however loosely defined, could be blamed for it."''' 
Is this an(other) allusion to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_demolition_hypothesis_for_the_collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center Controlled demolition hypothesis] for the collapse of the WTC? Cf. a similar reference in [[ATD_81-96#Page_85|page 85]] and the discussion therein.

Pynchon seems to be a smart enough guy to not believe such ridiculious theories. It's all too easy to read into these true historical events (the short-lived period of anarchist bombings of the late 19th and early 20 centuries) similitudes with more recent events, but the context in AtD is clear enough that this sort of speculation seems to be nothing more than speculation. Of course, that's the fodder for conspiracy theorists...--[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 04:40, 21 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 176==

'''"the Powers, who always had more dwarves waiting, even eagerly, to be sent below."''' 
A Tolkien-inspired imagery? Dwarfs figure prominently into Norse mythology and fantasy works before Tolkien, but Tolkien supposedly began the use of the spelling, "dwarves," employed here. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf Wikipedia entry on Dwarf]

'''Tortoni's on Arapahoe''' 
Italian restaurant located in the 1500 block of Arapahoe Street in downtown Denver. [http://www.rootsweb.com/~codenver/miracle/104.htm Photo]

'''Gahan's saloon across the street from City Hall''' 
Saloon operated by William Gahan, a Denver City Councilman, and his brothers conveniently located at 1401 Larimer Street in Denver, across the street from City Hall. Gahan operated two other saloons, including one at 1133 Larimer Street, which he supposedly kept open on Sundays, harbored gambling, and sponsored a boys' baseball team that played for beer.

'''Ed Chase, the boss of the red-light district''' 
Edward "Big Ed" Chase (1838-1921) was a New Yorker from Saratoga Springs who became the leader of criminal activities in Denver from 1860 on, and as such was an influential and respected man. He ran saloons, gambling houses, bordellos, and theaters (specializing in "burlesque"), and served on the Denver City Council from 1866-1869. After that, he was a behind-the-scenes ward boss and power broker for the Republican party, which dominated Denver politics at the time. Nearly every 19th century election in Denver was clouded by charges that Chase had organized an army of voters out of riffraff, vagrants, prostitutes, barflies and gamblers. By the time of his death in 1921, Chase had come to be regarded as a respected real estate investor and capitalist. For more info, consult ''The City & The Saloon: Denver 1858-1918'' by Thomas J. Noel.

'''"another little Haymarket"''' 
On May 4th 1886 a workers' protest meeting was held at the West Randolph Street Haymarket in Chicago. A bomb was thrown at the police, the police opened fire and many officers and protesters were killed ([http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/571.html chicagohistory.org])

==Page 177==

'''The Row''' 
Denver‘s red light district developed along McGaa Street (subsequently renamed Holladay and then Market Street) [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3951/is_200010/ai_n8908963 1] [http://www.womenof.com/Articles/d011899.asp 2]

==Page 178==

'''W.F.M.''' 
Western Federation of Miners [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Federation_of_Miners Wikipedia Entry]

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
The Klan itself was not in its heyday at the time this episode took place, and not only is it unlikely that the Klan would have shown itself at the time, but also that it would have been this far west. The "modern" Klan was only reformed in 1915. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Wikipedia]

'''heeled''' 
Carrying a sidearm. (The word also means "having money," but here the first meaning is pretty clear.)

==Page 179==

'''Clovis Yutts''' 
"Yutz" is a slang word (from Yiddish) for a clueless goof.

'''different tempos and keys''' 
Cf 'anarchist miracle' in "Lot 49" (chapter 5).

In the early 1970s San Francisco was the site of the Black Flag Concerts, where anybody was allowed to make any music. People who attended said it was disorienting to wander through the crowd listening to folk singers, kazoo bands and Celtic harpists all belting away. (The Black Flag is a traditional emblem of anarchism.)

Also perhaps a reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ives Charles Ives], who wrote much music containing combatting sections in different keys, tempi and melody. The quintessential image of Ives' music is that of four marching bands playing different tunes arriving at the same village square. Ives attended Yale, though graduated in 1898, two years prior to the scene beginning on page 156.

==Page 180==

'''Valley Tan''' 
Mormon whiskey reported by Mark Twain. [http://historytogo.utah.gov/salt_lake_tribune/in_another_time/091795.html cite]

==Page 182==

'''faded into the mobility''' 
"Mobility" also appears in ''Mason & Dixon.'' The word was later shortened to "mob."

'''"kept wasting Agency money rattling off one telegram after another."''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from a letter by novelist Raymond Chandler to Jamie Hamilton, 21 March 1949:
:"I remember several years ago when Howard Hawks was making ''The Big Sleep'', the movie, he and Bogart got into an argument as to whether one of the characters was murdered or commited suicide. They sent me a wire (there's a joke about this too) asking me, and dammit I didn't know either. Of course I got hooted at. The joke was in connection with Jack Warner, the head of Warner Bros. Believe it or not, he saw the wire, the wire cost the studio 70 cents, and he called Hawks up and asked him whether it was really necessary to send a telegram about a point like that. That's one way to run a business." (''The Raymond Chandler Papers'', ed. by Tom Hiney and Frank McShane, Penguin 2001, p. 105)

'''P.E.T.N.''' 
The explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate. Ingredient of Semtex, discovered 1891. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETN Wikipedia]

'''Dr. Oyswharf''' 
Perhaps a reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley Owsley Stanley], wizard of LSD in the 1960s in San Francisco, and sound man for the Grateful Dead. (There is a Grateful Dead song entitle Wharf Rat.) Owsley, also known as "Bear", made the best 'cid of the times, and was a colorful character, eating almost nothing but meat, eggs and cheese.

'''mixtures of nitro compounds and polymethylenes''' 
Nitro compounds include TNT, nitroglycerine and many other explosives. Polymethylenes are probably polymethylene waxes used as stabilizers or desensitizers.

'''"The wallpaper in particular presented not a repeating pattern at all"''' 
Cf. Lucius Sheppard's 1985 short story ''The Fundamental Things'', where a lady starts translating her wallpaper pattern to Hebrew.

The connection between explosives and psychedelics is apparently not based in chemistry but it has appeared elsewhere in popular culture. The 1967 James Bond spoof ''Casino Royale'' has a scene where pillowcases are inflated with a psychedelic gas, a fuse is attached, and a powerful explosion is the result.

==Page 183==

'''Cyclomite''' 
A spelling error may lead to the idea that cyclomite is a name for the explosive RDX; that's cyclo'''n'''ite.

'''plasticerator''' 
Plasti-, moldable (in this case chewable); cera- related to Latin ''cera'' = wax, ''cerumen'' = earwax; -ator, an agent to modify a product. The word "plasticerator" does not seem to have caught on. It would not be a failed synonym for "plasticizer," an agent to make rigid plastics pliable.

==Page 184==

'''Kankakee''' 
city in Illinois.

'''things would happen gradually enough to afford time to do something about it''' 
A central idea in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', which features a rocket that breaks the sound barrier and thus the ability to kill you before you hear it coming.

'''the world turned all inside out''' 
This passage describes acid flashbacks.

==Page 185==

'''Trilby hat''' 
Named after George du Maurier's 1894 novel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilby Trilby]. du Maurier was a good friend of Henry James, who may have been miffed at the extraordinary success that this novel had, compared to James' own works.

'''excursion''' 
Wilde's US lecture tour was in 1882.

==Page 186==

'''"Like a Red Indian Stonehenge!" - "Only different!"''' 
Cf. " 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170). See also [[ATD_119-148#Page_133| page 133]].

[[image:hangedman.jpg|thumb|150px|right|The Hanged Man by Colman-Smith]]
'''''grifa''''' 
Marijuana. [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grifa cite]

'''Miss Colman-Smith is West Indian [tarot cards]''' 
Pamela Colman Smith (1878—1951) was an artist, illustrator, and writer. She is best known for designing the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of tarot cards for Arthur Edward Waite. Smith was born in England, the daughter of an American merchant from Brooklyn, Charles Edward Smith and his Jamaican wife Corinne Colman. Due to her father’s job with the West India Improvement Company, the family often moved, spending time in London, Kingston, Jamaica and Brooklyn, New York. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith Wikipedia entry]

Pynchon's interest in the tarot is evident in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. Two tarot cards are referred to here -- the Hanged Man ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider-Waite image]) and the Knight of Swords ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_arcana#Swords image]). The reference is an anachronism, as the deck wasn't published until 1909.

'''''espadas . . . copas''''' 
Spanish: Swords, Cups. The Tarot suits corresponding to spades and clubs.

'''Querent''' 
Latin: one who asks. The subject of a Tarot reading (in some settings, the mark).

'''Perseid''' 
"The shower is visible from mid-July each year, but the bulk of its activity falls between August 8 and 14 with a peak on August 12. During the peak, rates of a hundred or more meteors per hour can be registered." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseid Wikipedia]

==Page 187==

'''hell of a blow-up . . . . maiden's sigh''' 
Possible allusion to the testing of Trinity Bomb, the first explosion of an atomic weapon, which took place at White Sands, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_test Wikipedia].

see Anti-Stone, p. 78-79.

'''A second Moon''' 
On page 144, the Inconvenience is described as a "misplaced moon".

'''Galveston''' 
In the summer of 1900 Galveston was a major seaport; many of its cotton warehouses still stand. In the 19th century it was a port of entry for immigrants from Germany, Bohemia, the Balkans and elsewhere. The 1900 hurricane was the making of Houston, a few dozen miles up slow-flowing Buffalo Bayou—which was turned into the Ship Channel within a few years.

==Page 188==

'''Galveston Hurricane''' 
An historical event (8th September 1900, 6000 dead).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_Hurricane_of_1900 [Wikipedia]]

'''...before that frightful bomb brought you to us?''' 
Perhaps an allusion to and rhetorical parallel of the "wake-up bomb" of the 9/11 attacks, and the relative increase of attention paid by the American media and public to such post-9/11 disasters as the slaughter of citizens in the Afghan and Iraq offensives, the destruction wrought by the South Asian tsunami, the displacement of the "hidden" poor of the Gulf States by Hurricane Katrina, the carnage of the earthquake in Iran, the rampant and still-raging genocides of Sudan, and so on.

'''neuræsthenic''' 
This is the second appearance of the word (the first was on page 83). Neurasthenia was a kind of catch-all at the time for what today would be called depression, fatigue, anxiety, etc.

==Page 189==

'''Fireman Jim Flynn''' 
The nickname undoubtedly comes from railroading, not firefighting.

==Page 190==

'''blue northers''' 
In the West, the Plains and down to Texas, a blue norther is a fast-moving weather front with lightning, rain and wind, followed by a rapid drop in temperature.

==Page 191==

==Page 192==

'''nearly twenty''' 
1883 + 19yo = 1902?

'''stamps beating''' 
Breaking ore into small pieces in preparation for refining.

==Page 193==

'''Uncompahgre''' 
A Plateau in Western Colorado, named after the Uncompahgre Ute Indian Tribe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncompahgre_%28disambiguation%29 [Wikipedia]]

'''absorbed . . . re-emission . . . fluorescence of vindictiveness''' 
In a fluorescent tube, invisible ultraviolet radiation from the electrical discharge is absorbed by "phosphors" on the inside of the glass. The UV excites the phosphor atoms, which then—instead of giving off ultraviolet of their own—re-emit the energy at a different wavelength, one that is visible.

'''not since the aught-one strike''' 
So 1901 is in the past.

'''three-dollar sack suit''' 
That is, a suit one might buy at a store where one fills a sack with clothes and then pays three dollars for the lot.
A sack suit is an ordinary 19th-c. business suit which "evolved into the modern three piece suit."
[http://www.lahacal.org/gentleman/sack.html source]

==Page 194==

'''the fish at that table''' 
The player whose money the others mean to take.

'''Dallas Divide''' 
Mountain Pass dividing the Uncompahgre Plateau from the San Juan Mountains. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Divide [Wikipedia]]

==Page 195==

'''Sloat Fresno''' 
Possibly named for Commodore John D. Sloat ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Sloat Wikipedia entry]), American naval officer who claimed California, then a territory of Mexico, as part of the United States on July 7, 1846. The text of the declaration can be found [http://www.dmwv.org/mexwar/documents/sloat.htm here]. Another source may be the Sloat Lumber Co. of Quincy, CA, which used an uncommon 30 gauge track, about which all I can find is [http://members.tripod.com/~Sloat_Lumber_Co/PROTOTYP.HTM here]. Fresno is presumably a reference to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresno%2C_CA city in California], though its direct relation to either the Commodore or the Sloat Lumber Co. is unclear.

Sloat is another term for slat, a narrow piece of wood. Fresno is Spanish for ash.

'''copping the borax''' 
? Seemingly a term invented by Pynchon. No idea what it means, but borax is a mineral used in detergent, pottery, a lots of other things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borax Wikipedia on Borax]

"Borax" is a slang word for cheap, poorly made products. Makers of borax for use in cleansing apparently used to give away junky items as premiums. If you look at it the other way around, "borax" could mean a premium, hence an enlistment bonus. "Copping" of course is getting something by underhand means.

'''Montrose''' 
Montrose, CO. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montrose%2C_Colorado [Wikipedia]]

'''li'l buddy''' 
Brings to mind Gilligan and the Skipper from ''Gilligan's Island'': Sloat, like the Skipper, is twice his buddy's size; in both pairs, it is uncertain just who is whose sidekick; and the Skipper referred to Gilligan by, "li'l buddy."

==Page 196==

'''red liquor''' 
Colored liquor, such as bourbon or whiskey.

==Page 197==

'''Sloat tending to bodies, Deuce... the spirit''' 
Again, the body/soul dichotomy. See [[ATD_97-118#Page_101|page 101]] and [[The_World_is_at_Fault|The World is at Fault]] letter by Pynchon.

[[image:couplingpin.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Coupling pin]]'''coupling pin''' See photo.

==Page 198==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Repeats the title of Part One. May also suggest Tesla's 03 July 1899 'vision' ([[ATD_97-118#Page_97|page 97]]). May also be tied to the light/dark theme running through parts of the book thus far: light over the (dark) ranges. Note the concurrence of the leitmotives light-time-water in the sentence "He watched the light over the ranges slowly draining away". The image of "draining light" might also hint at the wave-particle duality.

'''Jeshimon''' 
Literally: "the waste", more specifically the wilderness of Judah in the Bible, near the Dead Sea. [http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/jeshimon.html christiananswers.net]. Fuller annotation at [[ATD_199-218#Page_209|page 209.]]

'''Cortez''' 
In far southwestern Colorado near the Utah state line.

'''shadow had taken the immeasurable plain''' 
Contrasts "the light over the ranges". Possibly an allusion to Sodom and Gomorrah, the "cities of the plain" in Genesis 19, in which the angels advise Lot and his family: "do not look back and do not stop anywhere in the Plain. Flee to the hills or you will be swept away" (19:17). ''The cities of the plain'', is also the title of i) the translated fourth volume of Proust's ''A la recherche du temps perdu'' (original title ''Sodome et Gomorrhe'') and ii) Cormac McCarthy's third novel of ''The Border Trilogy''.

This is the third possible reference to Proust so far. See also [[ATD_149-170#Page_165|page 165]], and [[#Page_188|page 188]].

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 119-148

2007-02-20T20:08:56Z

Gobbag: /* Page 141 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 121==

'''flying bridge''' 
On an ordinary aquatic ship, the flying bridge is an open deck atop the pilothouse for navigating in good weather. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_bridge [Wikipedia]]

'''to measure and map . . . that mysterious mathematical lattice-work''' 
A big research area in satellite and earth sciences. For example, if you know to utmost accuracy how gravity varies in near-Earth space, you can predict the orbits of satellites used for navigation and positioning (i.e., GPS).

'''"Ray-rush"''' 
Cf contemporary telecom bandwidth auctions. "Ray-rush" as "Gold-rush"

==Page 122==

'''transfiguration unceasing''' 
Not just continuous change, but specifically changes in the observer's face as the colors and intensities shift.

'''iceblink''' 
Lightening of the underside of clouds over ice. A related phenomenon is "water sky," darkening of clouds over water. [http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/basics/phenomena/water_sky.html Photos of both.]

'''souls bound to the planetary lines of force, swept pole to pole''' 
In ''V,'' Mondaugen was stationed in South Africa to record "sferics" or "whistlers," a form of radio interference due to charged particles traveling along Earth's lines of magnetic force. Here, the planet being hollow, the field may be continuous, north-south on the outside and then south-north on the inside, and the lines may represent some other, nonmagnetic field.

'''dazzle-painting''' 
A camouflage painting technique used on WWI ships.[http://www.gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html].

'''intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska''' 
Perhaps a reference to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) site in Gakonka, AK, which is ostensibly engaged in ionospheric research [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp (Wikipedia entry)]. Also suggestive of the ECHELON network [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON (Wikipedia entry)], comprising a number of signals intelligence sites, which are capable of intercepting a wide variety of communications signals throughout the world. Also, Pynchon often creates humorous or fanciful acronyms: W.A.S.T.E. (''The Crying of Lot 49''), A.C.H.T.U.N.G. (''Gravity's Rainbow''), etc.

'''Lloyd's of the high spectrum [...] the next fateful Lutine announcement.''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutine HMS Lutine] (Lutine translates as "the tease") was a ship commissioned in the French Royal Navy which was later given to the English Royal Navy during the Revolution. In 1799 she sank in the North Sea while blockading Holland; her hold was full of gold. Lloyd's of London, an independent insurance market still known for being willing to assume large insurance risks for the right price, had insured the gold, and paid the claim in full, acquiring nominal ownership of the still-unsalvaged cargo. The ship's bell was recovered in the mid-19th century and hangs to this day in the Underwriting Room at Lloyd's. For many years the the Lutine Bell was struck to announce news of an overdue ship: once if lost, twice if reported safe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_of_London#Miscellaneous [Wikipedia]]

'''last eclipse''' 
Possibly Pike's Peak, 1878? [http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhistory/SEhistory.html (partial table)]

==Page 123==

'''lookout telegraph''' 
Instead of attaching Pugnax's tail directly to a hammer that hits the gong, the gong is struck remotely via a telegraph line.

'''Igor Padzhitnoff''' 
The whole passage that introduces the rival airship captain is a play on Tetris. Igor's surname is similar to that of the creator of Tetris, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Pazhitnov Alexey Pazhitnov]. Also, the captain himself serves "a program of mischief", flies a ship called "The Great Game" and drops "bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his "signature," to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors."

The term 'Great Game' also refers to the intense geopolitical rivalry between the English and Russian empires over control of Central Asia during the whole of the 19th century [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia]. The period of this Great Game is thought to have ended in 1907, about the time of the book. The constant appearance of the Russians wherever the Chums go would appear to play on both this and on the coming Cold War conflict. The equation of all of these with Tetris suggests a common theme in all three 'non-violent' conflicts.

'''''Ice Pirates''''' 
This turn of phrase echoes the spoof [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ movie] of camraderie and dangerous "space herpes" that was released in 1984. There's no textual evidence that Pynchon means to refer to the movie, but the satirical humor and outlandish situations presented in the film might be attractive to someone with his sensibilities.

'''Tovarishchi Slutchainyi''' 
Tovarishchi translates as comrades; the literal translation of "Slutchainyi" is "accidental", leading to one possible reading of the phrase being: Chums of Chance. 
The phrase "Tovarishchi Slutchainyi" could also mean someone who is friends, but not intentionally, ie: perhaps people who are conscripted into a situation where they are forced to be communal. (Thanks to Anna Zaytseva for the idiomatic help!) 
A third reading is introduced when the homophonic correspondence between the final two syllables of Slutchainyi and Vice-President Cheney's name is noted. (Erhm, this doesn't work: the Russian word is sloo-CHIE-nee.)
:If the name were ''Tovarishchi Sluchainogo'' instead of as in the text, it would mean "Comrades of the Random," an exact parallel to the Chums.

'''trespassing upon their "sky-space" again''' 
A Soviet and Russian preoccupation, encroachment on their airspace by military or civilian flights.

'''nasal dislocation''' 
'Nose out of joint' = offended, feelings hurt.

==Page 124==

'''Na sobrat' ya po nebo!''' 
Randolph says "На собратья по небо." What I believe he means to say is
"Наши собратья по небу" or Nashi sobrat'ya po nebu, meaning "Our brothers/comrades of the sky"—perhaps a ritual greeting between the two groups. 
If aeronauts are like pilots, and they are--see ATD early---they feel and state a solidarity with others who fly. 
It is unlikely that Pynchon would make a mistake (the Russian in GR is correct) but Randolph might err. 
''Much'' of the Russian in ''GR'' is OK, not all, and somebody erred on page 123 when they made ''sluchainyi'' (singular) modify ''tovarishchi'' (plural).

==Page 125==
'''a ''roman-feuilleton'' by M. Eugène Sue''' 
A ''roman-feuilleton'' or serial novel. Eugène Sue (the "M." is for Monsieur = Mr.) was a French novelist roughly contemporary to Dumas père, with whom he has been compared. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Sue Wikipedia entry on Eugène Sue] Sue's most famous, which used to be a Modern Library title, is ''The Wandering Jew.''

His largest work, Les Mystères de Paris, is noted for its eventful plots and unique characters. Sue could have been called an early-19th-century Pynchon. Sue explored the underworld, and his work was quite sensational. [http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s#a1186 Link to his works at Gutenberg]

'''into the Zone of Emergency''' 
Both the text and the theme are reminiscent of Slothrop's passage "into the Zone" in GR

'''red as a cursed ruby representing a third eye in the brow of some idol of the incomprehensible''' 
Seems too random to not be a reference to something...Very possibly; under the name T.Lopsang Rampa an Englishman published a thoroughly discredited spiritual autobiography called The Third Eye. The Third Eye, by Englishman Cyril Hoskin, a fantastic (and popular) tale of Tibetan spirit possession published in 1956; included telepathy and more.

In the 1940 version of "The Thief of Bagdad" the boy thief Abu (played by Sabu) must steal a magical "all-seeing eye" (ruby?) from the brow of a massive golden idol in a remote temple, in order to see - as in a crystal ball - the location of the Princess held in thrall by the evil vizier Jaffar.

'''Isafjörðr''' 
Town in the Westfjords of Iceland. Often spelled as Isafjörður, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ísafjörður Wikipedia]

'''The "extra man" of Arctic myth''' 

In his footnotes to "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot glosses the lines:

''Who is the third who walks always beside you?'' 
''When I count, there are only you and I together'' 
''But when I look ahead up the white road'' 
''There is always another one walking beside you'' 

with:

"The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted." [http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/wasteland/thunder.html]

See also [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackletonexped/dispatches/19991110.html NOVA Online: Shackleton's Antarctic Odyssey]
"Shackleton, for his part, attributed their astonishing success to something else: 'I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.' Worsley and Crean, uncannily, felt the same. When T. S. Eliot read Shackleton's account, he was inspired to write the passage at the head of this dispatch."

'''the true face''' 
Possible variant on Taoism's "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao" [http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/the-X-that-can-be-Y-is-not-the-true-X.html [cf]]

'''bonzoline''' 
Ivory substitute made from celluloid, used for billiard balls. [http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=bonzoline [cite]]

==Page 126==
'''inukshuk''' 
An inukshuk is a stone landmark used as a milestone or directional marker by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Circle, dominated by permafrost, has few natural landmarks and thus the inuksuk was central to navigation across the barren tundra. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk Wikipedia entry on Inukshuk]

'''a truth beyond the secular''' 
Pynchon's use of the word "secular" is unusual. He previously had the Chums striving "to minimize contamination of the secular" on [[ATD_97-118#Page_113|page 113]], and here the Chums try to glimpse "some expression of a truth beyond the secular." Neither of these statements makes much sense with the normal definitions in use today for "secular"-- what could this mean?
: I think it is likely that secular means quotidian, "of the day", visible, as opposed to the invisible and mysterious which pervades ATD.
:Yes, that is a good extension of the original meaning: of the ages, of an age—as opposed to "eternal."

'''Étienne-Louis Malus''' 
See [[ATD_97-118#Page_114|page 114]].

'''Iceland spar''' 
A cristalline form of calcite. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcite Wikipedia]

'''Luxembourg Palace''' 
In Paris; now the seat of the French Senate.

'''376 feet, 6 inches''' 
The same length as the WWII-era [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_class_destroyer Fletcher Class Destroyer].

'''They passed around rumors--the Captain was insane again, ice-pirates were hunting the ''Malus'' like whalers...''' 
This phrase seems evocative of ''Moby Dick'', not only in the intimation that the Captain might be insane and the rumors that might result, but also with the explicit references to "whalers" in the subsequent clause, "the subtle insanity of Ahab." ''Moby Dick'' of course contains many scenes when two whaling ships come together to exchange messages. Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," features particularly sinister omens. It is safe to say, however, that none of the captains who meets Ahab quite resembles Padzhitnoff or has a "signature" resembling the game of Tetris! Pynchon once again lightly tweaks the "line" linking his body of work to Melville's. ([[ATD_57-80#Page_73|page 73]])

==Page 127==

'''Constance Penhallow''' 
Hallow: to set apart as holy, to honor greatly. Her name then pairs the virtue of constancy with honoring the pen. Note also that her grandson, mentioned a few lines below, is named Hunter and is an artist--In the hunt for the consecrated pen.

Alternatively, the prefix ''pen-'' is Gaelic for ''head, principal,'' or ''chief,'' in which case the name would mean "Holiest." It is also Latin for ''nearly, almost'' (as in "penultimate" or "peninsula"), rendering the name "nearly holy." Given the Nordic origin of the Penhallow family, and the Germanic etymology of "hallow," the Gaelic prefix may be more likely. On the other hand, the Latinate prefix suggests the state of preterition -- not quite holy and perhaps not saved...

I don't see "Nordic" (although their fortune is derived from Nordic commerce). The prefix ''Pen-'' in a surname marks the family as Cornish in origin.

'''walled garden''' 
In the Christian iconographic traditions of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, a walled garden, or ''hortus conclusus'' signified both/either the Garden of Eden and/or Mary's virginity.

'''Harald the Ruthless''' 
Harald III Sigurdsson (1015 – September 25, 1066), later surnamed Harald Hardråde (meaning ruthless) was the king of Norway from 1047 until 1066. Harald was the last great Viking king of Norway and his invasion of England and death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 proved a true watershed moment. It marked the end of the Viking age. In Norway, Harald's death also marked the beginning of the Christian era. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_III_of_Norway Wikipedia entry on Harald the Ruthless]

'''Ginnungagap''' 
In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness" or "gaping gap") was a vast chasm that existed before the ordering of the world. To the north of Ginnungagap lay the intense cold of Niflheim, to the south the insufferable heat of Muspelheim. At the beginning of time, the two met in the Ginnungagap; and where the heat met the frost, the frost drops melted and formed the substance eitr, which quickened into life in the form of the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnungagap Wikipedia entry on Ginnungagap]

==Page 128==

'''Bay of Röerford''' 
Does not seem to exist, at least with this spelling.

'''Hunter Penhallow''' 
See above, Constance Penhallow.

'''lower-eighties''' 
Latitudes from 80N to 85N (mainly Ellesmere Island). [http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm [map]]

'''love''' 
The word is rare in Pynchon's work. Here it is linked to separation, the human theme of the novel.

==Page 129==

'''Meat Olaf''' 
Anagram.
:As a lesson on the dangers of over-interpretation: I asked a Norwegian friend whether this is truly a Norwegian dish, to which he replied "no," making me feel stupid. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

'''''¡Cuidado Cabrón! Salsa Explosiva La Original''''' 
Cabrón is an offensive word in Spanish meaning a guy who is an asshole/dick/cuckold, but friends can also call each other Cabrón in a joking manner. So, ''Watch-Out, Fucker! The Original Explosive Sauce''.
:There appears, in "''Explosiva La Original''," to be a suggestion of an originary explosion, i.e. the Big Bang.

==Page 130==

'''Tsangpo-Brahmaputra country''' 
The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.

'''Candlebrow University''' 
A fictional institute, created in the tradition of Lovecraft's Miskatonic University.

'''Quaternions''' 
In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry].

'''Dr. V Ganesh Rao''' 
Ganesha is a Hindu god. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha Wikipedia]:

"It is widely believed that "Wherever there is Ganesha, there is Success and Prosperity" and "Wherever there is Success and Prosperity there is Ganesha". He is the Lord of Obstacles both of a material and spiritual order.[2] He is capable of placing obstacles in the path of those who need to be checked, and can remove blockages just as easily. By calling on him people believe that he will come to their aid and grant them success in their endeavour. He also is considered the master of intellect and wisdom."

'''Fleetwood Vibe''' 
Fleetwood, like Scarsdale, is a wealthy suburb of New York City. Both communities are located in Westchester County, north of New York City.

'''bucket-shop''' 
Business designed to cheat people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop [Wikipedia]]

'''Dodge Flannelette''' 
Flannelette is a little washcloth. 
Flannelette is a soft fabric popular (in the UK at least) for pyjamas of a cosy but unsexy kind --[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 10:40, 11 February 2007 (PST)
We have already seen one character with a name similar to an American car: Chevrolette.

'''Harriman... Schiff''' 
Railroad magnate and financier behind Northern Pacific Railroad, c1901. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Pacific_Railroad [Wikipedia]] [http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/eh_harriman.html Book on Harriman] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman Harriman Wikpedia Entry] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff Schiff Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 131==

'''"with oceangoing ships we left flat surfaces and went into Riemann space"''' 
One of Riemann's major contributions was the mathematics of manifolds, geometrical constructs that on a local scale appear to have fewer dimensions than they actually occupy. A standard example is the surface of the earth, which locally appears to be flat (2-dimensional), but in fact is curved (3-dimensional). Riemann's differential geometry quantifies the distortion produced by the curve of the surface.

'''Outer Hebrides''' 
or Western Isles comprise an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The population today is only 26,370, and there is no University.

==Page 132==

'''an ''additional axis'' whose unit is (-1)¹/²''' 
The usual form of representing a complex number ''z = b + ai'', (see below for explanation) graphically is by presenting its real part, ''b'', along the horizontal real axis and its imaginary part, ''a'', on the vertical imaginary (''additional'') axis of a Cartesian coordinate system. For a graph illustion of [http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jgraham/hypo/h13/images/image118.gif z = 1 + 2i].

'''complex number''' 
The complex number is of the form ''b + ai'', where ''a'' and ''b'' are real numbers and ''i'' is defined as the square root of -1, i.e. ''i'' = (-1)¹/². According to the definition, Cf page 133 Imaginary Number, ''ai'' is an imaginary number. Therefore, a complex number is a sum of real and imaginary numbers. Commonly, one use ''z'' to denote the whole expression ''b + ai'', i.e. ''z = b + ai''. And now ''z'' is called a complex number. Besides ''z'', the letter ''w'' is often used to denote complex numbers.

'''complex variable''' 
In mathematics, a 'variable' is a symbolic representation, usually a letter of the English (such as x and y), Greek or Roman alphabet, denoting an 'unkown' quantity which may vary during the course of calculation or investigation. For example, the speed of a jetliner,''v'', flying from Los Angeles to New York varies during the course of its flight. So,''v'' here is a variable. While 'c', the speed of light, unvaried, is a constant. In the algebraic equation y = ax² + bx + c where a, b and c are constants, x and y are ''variables''. When x and y involve complex numbers, then they are called complex variables.

'''''w = exp z''''' 
Here, ''w'' is a complex function, or a function of complex variables. ''exp z'' is the exponential function of ''z'' to the base ''e''. The expression ''w = exp z'' gives the relationship of the independent (complex) variable ''z'' to the dependent (complex) variable ''w'', i.e. mapping ''z'' onto ''w''. This relationship may not be one-to-one. The number ''e'' is the base of the natural logarithm, approximately equals to 2.71828. After ''Pi'', ''e'' is the most important
constant in mathematics. See the popular article about the history, definition and 10,000-place value of [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/e.html ''e''].

'''as Fitzgerald maintained, a shrinkage of dimension''' 
Irish physicist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_FitzGerald George FitzGerald] proposed a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction contraction of length] parallel to the direction of motion, to explain the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Quantitavely, the contraction is identical with the one predicted later by Einstein's special theory of relativity.

[http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/p200/str/str.html Here] is a concise and satisfying discussion of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century physics.

==Page 133==

'''Ynglingasaga''' 
See also Ynglinga Saga, or the story of the ancient Norse kings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ynglinga_saga Wikipedia entry]

'''''The Book of Iceland Spar''''', '''commonly described as "like the ''Ynglingasaga'' only different"''' 
" 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170)

'''... even of days not yet transpired.''' 
Reminiscent of the Borges short story "The Library of Babel" about an "infinite library" which contains every possible book. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_babel Wikipedia entry].

'''Imaginary Number''' 
Imaginary number is of the form ''ai'', where ''a'' is a real number, and ''i'' is defined such that ''i² = -1'', 
i.e. i = (-1)¹/² (sqare root of minus 1). For example, ''-16¹/²'', (square root of minus 16) is an imaginary number since it can be expressed as ''4i'' by definition. In the novel ''The Da Vinci Code'' (2003), the character Robert Langdon jokes that character Sophie Neveu "believes in the imaginary number ''i'' because it helps her break code". In Issac Asimov's short story ''The Imaginary'' (1942), eccentric psychologist Tan Porus explains the behavior of a mysterious species of squid by using imaginary numbers in the equations which describe its psychology.

==Page 134==

'''that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen''' 
Seems to echo Merle Rideout's theory on the "double refraction" of Blinky Morgan and Ed Morley from p.62. 
It's also a reference to the discussion of complex numbers in the previous pages, the implication being that the double refraction due to the Iceland Spar ("ninety-degree twist") puts the "Hidden People" into an imaginary space analogous to the imaginary axis of the space of complex numbers--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 12:55, 11 February 2007 (PST)
It could also be the angle at which light is polarized.

Also, this technique of bending light is similar to the technology The Predator has for a cloaking device. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_%28alien%29 Wikipedia]

'''visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect''' 
Extraterrestrials, perhaps? "Visitors", in popular culture, is a term sometimes used to describe ETs. The alien race from the television miniseries ''V'' was named The Visitors. In the fictional world of ''South Park'', aliens are referred to as "visitors".

'''infinitesimal circle''' 
Cf p58. Reference to epsilon neighbourhoods, an essential tool in mathematical proofs.

'''bad ice''' 
Uneven ice formed by pressure, currents and wind in the dynamic Arctic environment

'''neutral-density gray''' 
Photography term. A neutral-density filter is designed to reduce the amount of light entering the lens without introducing a colour cast.

'''the sea-green, the ice-green, glass-green sea.''' 
In ''Ulysses'', James Joyce repeatedly describes the "snotgreen sea" (cf. Gabler edition, p. 4), itself an allusion to Homer's evocation of the "wine-dark sea". Cf., also, ATD, p.127: " . . . a green headland, sheer green walls of ice, the greenness nearest the water . . . . " In previous novels, Pynchon's use of color is almost always advised, as N.K. Hayles and M.B. Eiser note in their essay, "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow," in which green is frequently associated with the natural world, uncontaminated by humanity. 
Also, the repetition itself has a Joyceian feel.--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 13:52, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Narvik''' 
is a town in Norway, above the Arctic Circle.

==Page 135==

'''Mush-It-Away''' 
Takeaway (takeout fast food) for dogsledders.

==Page 136==

'''Venice of the Arctic''' 
Many cities have been compared with Venice in Italy, usually due to a high density of waterways (especially inner city canals) and/or maritime trade connections. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_nicknames#.27Venice_of_....27 Wikipedia entry on Venice of the X comparisons]

The Venice passage contains two themes that have appeared often in ''Against the Day'' so far: that of doubles (such as Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe, Randolph and his Russian counterpart, etc) and that of chance or randomness (the Chums, the meeting of Vibe and Walker, etc).

Also the double versions of the map of Asia, double versions of elements that can be seen when they are viewed with Iceland Spar.

And Pynchon seems to love Venice, a very positive place in one short story

'''Bauer-Grünewald''' 
Famous hotel in Venice.

'''kedgework''' 
A set of pilings used to move a ship by hauling on its mooring or anchoring lines.

==Page 138==

In the period of ATD, museums around the world sought spectacular meteorites, e.g. the Cape York meteorite recovered by Arctic explorer Robert Peary.
[http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/what/capeyork.php]

'''Nesselrode pudding''' 
From ''The Penguin Book of Food and Drink'', ed. Paul Levy: 
"An iced pudding flavoured with chestnuts and dried fruit was invented by Monsieur Mony, chef for many years to the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, in Paris [...] Glacé fruit and peel were a further embellishment to the Nesselrode by the time Proust was old enough to notice such things.

==Page 139==
'''Dr. Counterfly... bearded''' 
Last seen as a boy with low rank. Six years have elapsed, 1893-1899.

'''lenses proved to be...Nicol prisms''' 
A Nicol Prism is a device to produce polarized light. It is made from a crystal of calcite (Iceland spar), which is cut along a precisely determined plane and then cemented back together with Canada balsam. A picture can be found [http://web.grinnell.edu/physics/PMuseum/Nicol%20Prisms.html here], detailed diagrams of Nicol and other polarizing prisms are availabe [http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/polpri.html here].

:Glasses like the ones described here are used for viewing 3-D movies.

'''''nunatak''''' 
A nunatak (plural: nunataks) is a mountain top that is not covered by land ice (see glaciation and ice age), and protrudes out of a surrounding glacier. The wildlife on a nunatak can be isolated by the glacier, just like an island is in the ocean. Nunataks are generally angular and jagged because of freeze-thaw weathering, and can be seen to contrast strongly with the softer contours of the glacially eroded land below if the glacier retreats. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunatak [Wikipedia]]

Pynchon's translation, "land connected" would seem to be at 180 degrees to Wikipedia's "lonely peak". Which is correct?

Perhaps "land connected" because it is a connection to the land beneath the glacier? --[[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 13:09, 19 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 140==

'''sensitive-flames''' 
The term has a specific technical meaning: [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Sensitive+flame External link]

'''a large brass speaking-trumpet''' 
Somewhat reminiscent of the ubiquitous W.A.S.T.E. symbolism in ''The Crying of Lot 49''.

[[image:Breguethands.jpg|thumb|Breguet hands|right]]'''Breguet-style arrowheads''' 
A distinctive fine watch of French design, usually with open circles ('moons') near the ends of the hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breguet_(watch) Wikipedia entry]

'''Poulsen's Telegraphone''' 
Invented in 1898, the first magnetic recording machine was patented by Valdemar Poulsen. The theory behind this machine was worked out theoretically by Oberlin Smith of the UK in 1888. Poulsen's machine recorded by passing a thin wire across an electromagnet. Each minute section of the wire would retain its electromagnetic charge, thus recording the sound. Sound could be both recorded and played back. Unfortunately, because the machine's output wasn't very loud and there was no way to amplify the signal, the Telegraphone was not much of a success. [http://www.wou.edu/las/creativearts/music/MUS%20206%20Text.pdf External link]

'''a human caul''' 
caul (Latin: Caput galeatum, literally, "head helmet") is a thin, filmy membrane, the remnants of the amniotic sac, that covers or partly covers the newborn mammal immediately after birth. It is also the membrane enclosing the paunch of mammals, particularly as in pork and mutton butchery. In butchery, the caul is used as offal. A third meaning refers to a type of women's headdress. The superstition attached to birth cauls has figured into numerous works of fiction, including ''David Copperfield,'' Stephen King's ''The Shining'' (wherein the child Danny Torrance, born with a caul, is possessed with the eponymous supernatural power), and Alan Moore's short graphic novel, ''The Birth Caul''.

==Page 141==

'''''camera lucida''''' 
A drawing aid sometimes used with an optical instrument; it is worthwhile to read the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida Wikipedia entry] in order to understand what's going on here.

'''misfortunes of certain Egyptologists''' 
Possibly a reference to the curse supposed to be attendant on the tomb of Tutankhamen, and upon which the death of George Herbert, who financed the expedition, was blamed. The tomb was breached in Feb 1923, though, and that seems later than this episode, so it may just be a reference to general myth. [http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/curse.htm [history]]

'''odalisque of the snows''' 
An odalisque was a virgin female slave who tended to the harem of the Turkish sultan. Numerous paintings of the 19th century portrayed them as reclining beauties. The most famous of these is Ingres' ''La grande odalisque'' (1814):

[[Image:odalisque.jpg|300px|center]]

'''mongoloid features''' 
Perhaps a reference to images of the Buddha, in which he is often seen reclining?

'''Tolkien???''' 
From FleetwoodVibe's journal of the Vormance expedition where his crew and the ChumsOfChance are assembled in the Inconvenience, observing the "''nunatak''" through some strange instrument (p141):

"...we were bound in a common terror of that moment at which it might ''become aware of our interest'' and smoothly pivot its awful head to stare us full in the face"

Startlingly, this is highly reminiscent of more than one passage in Lord of the Rings where transfixed good guys observe Sauron or his lair through a crystal ball, in terror of attracting his attention

==Page 142==

'''we intrepid innocents . . . destiny."
This Vormance expedition calls to mind the 2004 film [http://imdb.com/title/tt0370263/ AVP: Alien Vs. Predator], in which an exploratory expedition funded by nefarious corporate elements discovers an ancient polar pyramid which they descend into, getting more than they bargain for in the process. Good stupid camp.

See p. 134 in regards to Predator's cloaking device.

==Page 143==

'''Tungus''' 
Siberian language. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungusic_languages [Wikipedia]]

'''bilocation''' 
Doubtless to be an important concept in the novel, judging by the title of Part Three. Latin bis, twice, and locatio, place. Bilocation is as Pynchon explains, the ostensibly supernatural act of appearing or being in two or more locations simultaneously. Bilocation is claimed to have been experienced, and even practiced at will, by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, and magical adepts. Notably, Icelandic sagas also speak of warriors who were able to fall into a trance and appear thousands of miles away in battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation Wikipedia on bilocation] Is also obviously related to the physical properties of Iceland Spar.

'''Christian Time''' 
That is, linear time, a concept first introduced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo St. Augustine of Hippo] (354-430), in his autobiographical [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions/confessions.html ''Confessions'']. Augustine argued that the inevitability and singularity of Christ's return demanded that all history must be viewed as a linear progression toward the apocalypse and the ascendancy of Christ on Earth, after which time would effectively stop, an event described as the "End of Days." From this decidedly deterministic view of time, Augustine derived his doctrine of predestination, that is, of a world in which each soul, even as it is born, is already pre-defined as saved or unsaved. While the Catholic Church would eventually reject this doctrine, the protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin resurrected it, and it became an important part of Calvinist theology, notably as practiced by the Puritans.

==Page 144==

'''"we measured, and remeasured, and each time the dimensions kept coming out different - not just slightly so but drastically."''' 
Cf. Mark Danielewski's debut novel ''House Of Leaves'' (2000), where a house interior dimensions keep changing, while the exterior remains unaltered. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_leaves Wikipedia entry]

'''"its gaze had remained directed solely, personally, to each of us, no matter where we stood or moved."''' 
Supposedly a standard feature of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church portrait-icons.

Also brings to mind [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_lisa Mona Lisa]

'''something, down there, below our feet... where it lay patient and thawing, was terribly, and soon to be more terribly, amiss.''' 
This is all extremely Lovecraftian, and especially brings to mind Lovecraft's story, "At The Mountains Of Madness". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Mountains_of_Madness Wikipedia]

'''Returned to harbor at last''' 
Not in Iceland but in the city from where the expedition first sailed.

==Page 145==

'''upstate security of Matteawan''' 
I.e., committed to the Matteawan Asylum at Fishkill, N.Y. Does this leave any doubt as to the name of the great city?

[[image:Evangelion.jpg|right|175px|thumb|The apocalyptic giant of light unearthed in the Arctic in Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'''the man-shaped light shall not deliver you''' 
Reminiscent of the famous Japanese anime ''Neon Genesis Evangelion'' (1994-95), in which mankind unearths a mysterious creature from the Arctic ice that appears as a man-shaped giant of light, gets out of man's control and triggers an apocalypse. Probably not an intentional reference, but if Pynchon plays Tetris, who knows? 
:-sinister variant of GR's Kirghiz Light? Those who see the Light find their words dismissed "as the meaningless sounds of a baby" (GR 358) just as witnesses to ATD's light are sent to the sanitorium. Note also the line's similarity to the Aqyn's warning from GR: "And the Light will never find you." (359)

c.f. the man-shaped light on 153

==Page 146==

'''lines''' 
The description of the single-file line at the train station basically describes current security conditions at American airports.
A single line (i.e. linear thinking) does not seem to be a 'positive' in the Pynchon world. (See too the slaughterhouse on page 10.)

'''Explorers' Club''' 
Apparently in South Africa (the famous NYC one wasn't founded until 1904).
:In Washington, D.C., though this doesn't help with the timing since the D.C. chapter wasn't formed till 1924. But "in Africa," "out there" and the word "British" in referring to the poet laureate—these all rule out Africa as the site.

'''Dr. Jim's little adventure''' 
A reference to the so-called "Jameson Raid" spearheaded by Dr. L. S. Jameson. The raid was intended to trigger an uprising among the British expatriate workers (the Uitlanders) in the Transvaal, but failed, and instead served to further destabilize the region and catalyze the Second Boer War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid Wikipedia entry] (From Wikipedia: “The Jameson Raid (December 29, 1895 - January 2, 1896) was a raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895-96. It was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so. The raid was ineffective and no uprising took place, but it did much to bring about the Second Boer War and the Second Matabele War.”)

'''"War any moment"''' 
The Second Boer War started in October 1899. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War [Wikipedia]]

'''Rand shares''' 
Not the currency, but rather the gold fields near Johannesburg. The following page confirms this: "In the Rand, some of the shafts go down four thousand feet."

'''the British poet-laureate’s commemorative verse''' 
Reference to Alfred Austin. From Wikipedia: “As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Austin Wikipedia entry]

The questionable rhyme referred to is from that “hasty poem” --

::They went across the veldt,
::As hard as they could pelt.

==Page 147==

'''Borchardt''' 
[[image:borchardt.jpg|thumb|200px|Borchardt pistol|right]]1894 forerunner of Luger.

'''Nansen''' 
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (1861-1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat. Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner. In 1893, he sailed to the Arctic in a ship which was deliberately allowed to drift north through the sea ice, a journey that took more than three years. During this first crossing of the Arctic Ocean the expedition became the first to discover the existence of a deep polar basin. When, after more than one year in the ice it became apparent that the ship would not reach the North Pole, Nansen continued north on foot and, in April 1895, reached 86° 14´ N, the highest latitude then attained. The two men were forced to spend the winter, surviving on walrus blubber and polar bear meat. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen Wikipedia entry on Nansen] Cf. p. 138.

'''Suppose it were to happen to us . . . an innocence they knew how to circumvent''' 
"Art" is supposed, among other things, to help us interpret our world. This passage is Art as brilliant and hardnosed as anything Goya or Picasso or Shostakovich ever created. Just one man's opinion. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:19, 5 February 2007 (PST)

This passage, "use humans for similar purposes", ie, for food, recalls the classic Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man, as well as the movie Soylent Green.

==Page 148==

'''"Evolution. Ape evolves to man, well, what's the next step - human to what? Some ''compound organism'', the American Corporation, for instance"''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from William Gibson's 1981 short story "New Rose Hotel":

:Imagine an alien, Fox once said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has a look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.
:The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.

'''the American Corporation, for instance, in which even the Supreme Court has recognized legal personhood ''' 
Refers to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), during which Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad Wikipedia entry] Corporations are routinely recognized as "persons" in the law nowadays. For more on the recognition of corporation as legal persons, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Wikipedia entry on corporate personhood]. A recent documentary film, ''The Corporation'' (2003), tried to make the case that if a corporation is a "person," it has the personality of a psychopath.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 149-170

2007-02-20T19:57:39Z

Gobbag: /* Page 151 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 149==

'''meteorite''' 
Cf ''Smilla's Sense of Snow'' by Peter Hoeg.

==Page 150==
'''the entangled carriages, wagons, and streetcars ... hitched to animals months dead and yet unremoved''' 
An anticipation of the scenes of destruction following the U.S. federal government's and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fema FEMA]'s botched relief efforts at the onset and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the southeastern United States in August and September 2005. 
:also a likely visual reference to the popular belief that the Christian Rapture will involve abandoned vehicles jamming the highways as motorists ascend skyward.

'''Tammanoid creatures, able to deliver votes''' 
As in "Tammany Hall", the often corrupt political machine that played a role in New York City politics for nearly two centuries. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall Wikipedia entry].

'''a stationary star, let alone one of the falling sort''' 
''Gravity's Rainbow'', p. 760: "But it was ''not a star'', it was falling, a bright angel of death." The whole passage seems strongly connected to GR.

'''White Wings''' 
For many years (1880s or 1890s through 1950s?) the most visible and dependable of New York City's public services: the street sweepers.

==Page 151==

'''the Eskimo view''' 
But cf page 142, where the Eskimos are "eager" to help.

'''...at least one consultation with somebody - that "there would always be time..."''' 
once more ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.760: "There is time, if you need the comfort, to touch the person next to you...".

'''Panic fear... affecting pose''' 
Although there are hints in the previous pages, here is where the parallels with 9/11 become too clear to ignore. Pynchon's presenting 9/11 as a story of a meteor dug from the ice will no doubt fill pages of analysis soon. To start, though, Pynchon critiques post-9/11 opportunism ("many in the aftermath did profit briefly by... affecting that pose"). Many say 'opportunism' has attended many, many disasters. For a full, spoiler-filled discussion, see [[Against the Day and September 11]] 

'''Deep downtown, where a narrow waterway from long ago still ran up into the city...''' 
Ok, this is fiction but we've all convinced ourselves we're talking about New York. Pynchon could have invented this waterway but that's not his style. So where is this waterway in downtown NY? 

'''a cargo ship... in whose hold... kept in restraints... stirred a figure with supernatural powers''' 
Also reminiscent of ''King Kong'', where the chained ape is transported by ship to New York.

==Page 152==

'''Tenderloin toughs''' 
The red-light district of Manhattan at the time, in Midtown Manhattan from 23rd Street to 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue to Seventh Avenue.

'''Fire and blood were about to roll like fate upon the complacent multitudes''' 
cf. Genesis 19:24: "and then the LORD rained down fire and brimstone from the skies on Sodom and Gomorrah."

'''beautiful patterns''' 
Cf. "picturesque patterns," p. 81, as well as Igor Padzhitnoff's Tetris-like bombardments on [[ATD 119-148#Page 123|p. 123]].

==Page 153==

'''a three dimensional image in full color, not exactly of Christ but with the same beard, robes, ability to emit light''' 

Note that the unnamed enemy allegedly said, "The man-shaped light shall not deliver you" back on page 145. On whether this may or may not also allude to Osama bin Laden, see the [[Talk:ATD_149-170|149-170 Talk Page]].

:Or Christ himself "doubly refracted" into the anti-Christ.[[User:S-Fremin|S-Fremin]] 08:19, 20 January 2007 (PST)

:Also recalls, once again, the last page of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', with its "closeup of the face, a face we all know".

'''Our Protector...who remained, guardedly, unnamed''' 
unnamable, like the atomic bomb on p.78 (Cf. Webb, Merle and the "Anti-Stone")

'''recent incorporation''' 
1898. New York City is a special case. The city consists of the entire area of five counties. These counties retain a small amount of governance as boroughs. Under the state legislation, commonly called Consolidation, that allowed the city (as the City of Greater New York) to annex huge areas beyond its original borders (including smaller cities, towns and villages) in 1898, the State of New York retains certain powers over the city. At the time of Consolidation, Queens County was split between the western towns, which voted to join the city, and those that did not. The next year (1899), the eastern towns of Queens County separated to become Nassau County. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_divisions_of_New_York#Borough Wikipedia entry]

==Pages 154-155==

'''weeping widow...cruelest bitch of a city''' 
Personifications of the city, as in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (p.4: "last crystallizations of all the city has denied, threatened, lied to its children"). What is "he" and "she" referring to in the following paragraph?

'''Hellfire''' 
once more fire and brimstone.

'''the Destroyer''' 
Allusion to the Hindu god Shiva?

'''I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY''' 
From the description of the gate to hell in Canto III in ''The Divine Comedy Volume I: Inferno'' by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). Pynchon quotes from the modern translation by Mark Musa:

:"I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY,
:I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL GRIEF,
:I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN RACE.

:JUSTICE IT WAS THAT MOVED MY GREAT CREATOR;
:DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME,
:AND HIGHEST WISDOM JOINED WITH PRIMAL LOVE.

:BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS
:WERE MADE, AND I SHALL LAST ETERNALLY.
:ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YOU WHO ENTER."

Note that Pynchon echoes the word "race" on the previous page: "an embittered and amnesiac race".

:The "votive shrine . . . Downtown" may be intended to evoke the shrine at the footprints at Ground Zero, "votive" here invoking the twin beams of light that took the place of the WTC towers in the months following 9-11, though it should be noted that the actual description invokes the basement cavities of the the towers' foot-prints much more accurately.

'''From the Journals of Mr. Fleetwood Vibe...''' 
The short narrative spanning pp.138-155 bears some of the hallmarks characteristic of the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft: (1) a narrator (Fleetwood) who relates a series of horrible, cosmic events in the form of a memoir or journal entry; (2) a slumbering entity, or "visitor" (p149), mistaken for a more mundane object (meteorite, in this case), and; (3) the incapacity of humans to anticipate or respond to the foreignness of this cosmic vistior and its actions. Given that this horrible thing was retrieved from the Arctic, it is reminiscent of Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" (though, ''Antarctic'' in setting; 1931; [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/At_the_Mountains_of_Madness Wikisource text of the novella]) and, given the meteor-like form of this visitor, "The Colour out of Space" (1927; [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Colour_Out_of_Space Wikisource text of the story]).

In addition, the whole passage probably makes reference to several 1950s Sci-Fi movies, most importantly "The Thing from Another World" (1951) by Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby (remade as "The Thing" by John Carpenter in 1982) in which scientists discover an alien and lethal lifeform under the ice of the arctic. The idea of the alien lifeform falling to earth and being mistaken for a meteorite at first is prominent in Jack Arnold's "It Came from Outer Space" (1954), although the aliens in that case are benevolent rather than dangerous.

Hunter Penhallow's escape might be read as a happy ending getaway inversion of the claustrophobic opening sequence of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', where nobody gets saved; "in this world brought low" echoes "the Light that hath brought the Towers low" on the final page of Gravity's Rainbow..."Light" may prefigure Against the Day's treatment of that subject, too.

:cf also "The Museum at night...unlighted and towering", p.150

The disorientation that Hunter experiences (city streets skewing, finding a mysterious group of people) echoes Lew Basnight's encounter with Drave's group ([[ATD_26-56#Page_39|p39]]), and the vision on the opening pages of ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

==Page 156==

'''rival school hues''' 
Yale: blue and white. Harvard: crimson white, and black.

'''"Mr. Rinehart"''' 
A Harvard rallying cry, supposedly dating to 1900. The original Rinehart obtained his law degree from Harvard in 1903. In 1900 Mr. Rinehart occupied a high room in Gray's Hall at Harvard. It was easier for his friends to call to him from the ground than to climb three flights of stairs when they wanted him to join them. They would stand at the corner of Gray's and shout, "Oh, Rinehart." Many another student was called in the same way, and no particular attention was paid. But one sweltering night, when students were grinding for final examinations, one of them heard the familiar "Oh, Rinehart" from below and reacted instantly. He tossed aside his book and echoed the cry into the Yard. Within a minute, the enclosure resounded with the phrase from side to side and end to end. Something about the sound and accent of the name appealed to the students and from then until the end of the session the cry was heard nightly throughout the Yard. [http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0110b&L=ads-l&P=9765 source]

In later years, the origin story for the tradition changed: Rinehart became a lonely freshman who shouted his own name to see what it would sound like to be popular. He was discovered shouting his own name and the cry of "Rinehart" was used to make fun of him. The tradition continued until after World War II, when it faded from memory. Contemporary students apparently aren't familiar with the story or tradition. [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/003880.html Language Log]

'''Tibetan prayer wheel principle''' 
Previously mentioned on [[ATD_119-148#Page_130|page 130]], where the principle was used to transport oneself to the tropical locale of the ''¡Cuidado, Cabrón!'' hot sauce label.

==Page 157==

'''"crimson" is cognate with "worm"''' 
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003873.html Largely true.] The American Heritage Dictionary gives the [http://www.bartleby.com/61/79/W0227900.html etymology for ''worm''] as "Middle English, from Old English ''wurm,'' variant of ''wyrm.''" The root ''wyrm'' in turn derives from the Indo-European base [http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE571.html wer-2], meaning to turn or bend. (Words descended from wer-2 include ''stalwart, weird, vertebra, wrath, wrong, wrestle, briar'' and ''rhapsody.'') The modern word ''crimson'' derives from Middle English ''cremesin,'' which (via one of several alternative pathways) comes from Arabic ''qirmizy,'' a word based on ''qirmiz,'' the kermes insect. This insect, which lives on the Kermes oak (''Quercus coccifera''), was an early source for red dye but fell out of favor after the introduction of [http://www.bell.lib.umn.edu/Products/cochinea.html cochineal]. The Arabic name for this insect probably stems from the Sanskrit ''kṛmi-ja-,'' referring to a red dye produced from worms. The ''-ja'' is from an Indo-European root ''*gene-,'' meaning "to produce" (whence, ultimately, our word "gene" and the ''-gen'' in chemical element names). The other component, ''kṛmi-,'' means "worm", and takes us back to Indo-European wer-2.

'''"no professional football"''' 
NFL founded 1902. [http://www.nfl.com/history/chronology/1869-1910 cite]

==Page 158==

'''Willard Gibbs''' 
Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page 29|page 29]]. J. Willard Gibbs (1839-1903), an American mathematical physicist.

'''lust in idleness''' 
"Love-in-idleness" is a traditional name for the pansy.

'''Hamiltonian''' 
Hamilton Quaternion (Cf [[ATD_119-148#Page 130|page 130]]) disciples.

In classical mechanics, Hamiltonian is a function used to describe a dynamical system (as a pendulum or a particle in motion) in terms of generalized coordinates and momenta. It is equal to the total energy of the system when time is not explicitly part of the function. It is named after the Irish mathematician Sir William R. Hamilton (1805-1865). ([http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Hamilton.html Hamilton].)

==Page 159==

'''Witherspoon Street''' 
Runs to the north, away from the main gate of the Princeton campus. See also [[Witherspoon Street|DISCUSSION]].

'''across the perilous æther''' 
Here it just seems to mean "air," and indeed ''air'' has ''æther'' in its etymology.

'''meat lozenges''' 
Lightweight for hikers. "Brand's meat lozenges, which are about the size of a four-penny piece and a quarter of an inch thick" [http://www.rootsweb.com/~nzlscant/mountcook.htm cite]

==Page 160==

'''Dittany''' 
Greek herb symbolising love. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dittany_of_Crete Wikipedia]

==Page 161==

'''Elsie de Wolfe''' 
(1865-1950), American interior designer, hostess, and actress, best known for her innovative and anti-Victorian interiors. She is often credited with inventing the profession of interior decoration. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_De_Wolfe Wikipedia entry]

'''Roscoe Conkling''' 
(1829–1888) was a politician from New York who served both as a member of the United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Conkling Wikipedia]

'''Tubby the pig''' 
Pynchon thinks pigs are cool. For examples, the character Pig Bodine, the Porky Pig tattoo and the Plechazunga costume in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. Pynchon was allegedly notorious for carrying around a 6- to 7-inch yellow plastic pig ([http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html source]), and his room was allegedly decorated with pig toys around the 1960s, according to Jules Siegel's Playboy article on the writer.

==Page 162==

'''Sillery''' 
Wine from French commune. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sillery%2C_Marne Wikipedia]

==Page 163==

'''"Kit was wondering through the house when he heard piano music"''' 
Just like Kurt Mondaugen, in chapter 9 of ''V.'' (p. 238)

==Page 164==

'''Logical paradoxes''' 
Fleetwood has presented Kit with a statement similar to the notorious liar paradox with "...you shouldn't trust anything I have to say about this family."
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox Wikipedia] 
Whether the statement actually qualifies as a paradox is not immediately clear. Fleetwood is not just saying "you shouldn't trust anything I have to say," which is self referential in the manner of the liar paradox. He is specifically referring to some sentences he might utter "...about this family." Unless we are willing to interpret Fleetwood's sentence itself as being about his family, and not just some other sentences he might utter, it is not paradoxical. Fleetwood is a member of the family. His sentence makes a statement that casts doubt on what he might say about a member of the family. This statement by Fleetwood about what he might say can be (but arguably not "must be") interpreted, in a general sense, as a statement about his family (which includes himself). On that interpretation he is making a statement that denies that the statement itself can be trusted. 
There is a second way Fletwood's statement does not clearly show itself to be a paradox. Most variations on the liar paradox are statements that claim themselves to be false; this is different from a statement saying that it cannot be trusted. If something cannot be trusted, it might still be true.

==Page 165==

'''"your strongest certainty...you remember everything"''' 
The whole paragraph recalls Proust's ''A la recherche du temps perdu'', where random perceptions suddenly bring back lost memories. Through this remembrance the past is regained, and it is suddenly possible to constitute identity. This might be mirrored in Fleetwood's "single great episode of light" in which one hasn't "discovered it but returned to it".

'''a simply-connected space with an unbroken line around it''' 
Orthodox Jewish communities often make a symbolic perimeter around their space so that they can, for example, carry a book as they walk to Sabbath worship; by convention they are still "home"—thus not enjoined against some kinds of work—as long as they stay inside this ''eruv.'' One such neighborhood in Atlanta uses a set of electrical power lines to bound its area.

==Page 166==

'''hair ropes''' 
Cowboy superstition: horsehair ropes kept snakes away.

'''"some peaceful expanse of rangeland"''' 
The use of the word "range" along with the previous page's description of heavenly light suggest some connection to the phrase, "the light over the range."

'''"stand your ground"''' 
Ellmann tells a similar story about Joyce's father facing charging riders in Phoenix Park.

==Page 167==

'''...it was a time honored principle to do nothing for free [...] Trust me. Buy Rand shares''' 
It is implied that Rand is a gold mining company (does anyone know if this is/was a real company?). Regardless, Yitzhak and Fleetwood are talking about South Africa. Although the ''rand'' is the currency of South Africa today, it was not in circulation intil 1961. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_pound source]) The famous Kruger''rand'' is a gold coin, but that was introduced in 1967. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krugerrand source]) The Witwaters''rand'' is the ridge upon which Johannesburg is built.

It is possible that Pynchon is also mocking the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which is often characterized as a defense of selfishness or strong individualism. Pynchon [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0277-335X(198201)47%3A1%3C62%3ALATWWO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W previously parodied] Ayn Rand and her Theory of Objectivism as "Mafia Winsome" and her "Theory of Heroic Love" in ''V.''
: It seems a stretch to interpret this as a reference to Ayn Rand, especially as these sound like historical facts: although the Australian gold rush began in the 1850s, the rich Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie fields of gold were found in the 1890s, apparently triggering later rushes. ([http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/goldrush/ source]) But perhaps... [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 17:59, 22 December 2006 (PST)

'''war going on''' 
The Second Boer War started 11 October 1899, between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic). After a protracted hard-fought war, the two independent republics lost and were absorbed into the British Empire. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War Wikipedia]

==Page 168==

'''Eastern Question''' 
Europe's concern with post-Ottoman Turkey. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Question Wikipedia]

'''"Fleetwood wanted to be like them...He prayed to become one of them. [...] Nothing "took." "''' 
Cf. William Gibson's 1981 short story ''Hinterlands'' ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinterlands_%28short_story%29 Wikipedia entry]), for a similar case of people willing unsuccesfully to be "taken" by the unknown (albeit without Pynchon's explanation as to why this doesn't happen):
:"We both have the drive, though, that special need, that freak dynamic that lets us keep going back to Heaven. We both got it the same way, lay out there in our little boats for weeks, waiting for the Highway to take us. And when our last flare was gone, we were hauled back here by tugs. Some people just aren't taken, and nobody knows why. And you'll never get a second chance. [...] But I'd wanted to go, wanted it so bad. Charmian, too."

'''Massawa''' 
a port on the Red Sea coast of Eritrea. Important for many centuries, it has been colonised by Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Britain... It became the capital of the Italian colony of Eritrea until this was moved to Asmara in 1900. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massawa Wikipedia entry]

'''Lourenço Marques''' 
Today known as Maputo, capital city of Mozambique. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maputo Wikipedia entry]

'''''cantinhas''''' 
Portuguese: taverns (like Spanish ''cantinas'').

'''rotgut rejectamenta of Bucelas and Dão''' 
Rotgut= "poor-quality and potentially toxic alcoholic liquor." Rejectamenta= "things thrown out or away," so the reject wine. Bucelas, Portugal is a famous wine-growing region. Dão is a type of Portuguese wine.

'''"like Baku with giraffes"''' 
''Gravity's Rainbow'' mentions Baku by name three times, according to the Pynchon Pages index (http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/b.html):

352; seaport capital of Azerbaydzhanskaya SSR, Soviet Union, on the west coast of the Caspian Sea; 353; Blobadjian "pursued through the black end of Baku by a passel of screaming Arabists" 354
(Actually there are four references, as it appears twice in page 354 - [[User:Ctsats|Ctsats]] 20:28, 25 January 2007)

And not to forget the giraffe: "Foppl stood holding a sjambok or cattle whip of giraffe hide" (''V.'', chapter 9, p. 240)

After reading this section, and the oddly-separated text of Fleetwood's reverie about his pursuit of wealth in the Transvaal, and his murder of the Kaffir, the family name struck me, "Vibe" = "V" I be. Certainly this section brings back the African horror of "V."

==Page 169==

'''eGoli''' 
Zulu name for Johannesburg and a possible pun on e-coli.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 119-148

2007-02-13T20:42:48Z

Gobbag: /* Page 140 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 121==

'''flying bridge''' 
On an ordinary aquatic ship, the flying bridge is an open deck atop the pilothouse for navigating in good weather. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_bridge [Wikipedia]]

'''to measure and map . . . that mysterious mathematical lattice-work''' 
A big research area in satellite and earth sciences. For example, if you know to utmost accuracy how gravity varies in near-Earth space, you can predict the orbits of satellites used for navigation and positioning (i.e., GPS).

'''"Ray-rush"''' 
Cf contemporary telecom bandwidth auctions. "Ray-rush" as "Gold-rush"

==Page 122==

'''transfiguration unceasing''' 
Not just continuous change, but specifically changes in the observer's face as the colors and intensities shift.

'''iceblink''' 
Lightening of the underside of clouds over ice. A related phenomenon is "water sky," darkening of clouds over water. [http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/basics/phenomena/water_sky.html Photos of both.]

'''souls bound to the planetary lines of force, swept pole to pole''' 
In ''V,'' Mondaugen was stationed in South Africa to record "sferics" or "whistlers," a form of radio interference due to charged particles traveling along Earth's lines of magnetic force. Here, the planet being hollow, the field may be continuous, north-south on the outside and then south-north on the inside, and the lines may represent some other, nonmagnetic field.

'''dazzle-painting''' 
A camouflage painting technique used on WWI ships.[http://www.gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html].

'''intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska''' 
Perhaps a reference to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) site in Gakonka, AK, which is ostensibly engaged in ionospheric research [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp (Wikipedia entry)]. Also suggestive of the ECHELON network [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON (Wikipedia entry)], comprising a number of signals intelligence sites, which are capable of intercepting a wide variety of communications signals throughout the world. Also, Pynchon often creates humorous or fanciful acronyms: W.A.S.T.E. (''The Crying of Lot 49''), A.C.H.T.U.N.G. (''Gravity's Rainbow''), etc.

'''Lloyd's of the high spectrum [...] the next fateful Lutine announcement.''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutine HMS Lutine] (Lutine translates as "the tease") was a ship commissioned in the French Royal Navy which was later given to the English Royal Navy during the Revolution. In 1799 she sank in the North Sea while blockading Holland; her hold was full of gold. Lloyd's of London, an independent insurance market still known for being willing to assume large insurance risks for the right price, had insured the gold, and paid the claim in full, acquiring nominal ownership of the still-unsalvaged cargo. The ship's bell was recovered in the mid-19th century and hangs to this day in the Underwriting Room at Lloyd's. For many years the the Lutine Bell was struck to announce news of an overdue ship: once if lost, twice if reported safe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_of_London#Miscellaneous [Wikipedia]]

'''last eclipse''' 
Possibly Pike's Peak, 1878? [http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhistory/SEhistory.html (partial table)]

==Page 123==

'''lookout telegraph''' 
Instead of attaching Pugnax's tail directly to a hammer that hits the gong, the gong is struck remotely via a telegraph line.

'''Igor Padzhitnoff''' 
The whole passage that introduces the rival airship captain is a play on Tetris. Igor's surname is similar to that of the creator of Tetris, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Pazhitnov Alexey Pazhitnov]. Also, the captain himself serves "a program of mischief", flies a ship called "The Great Game" and drops "bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his "signature," to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors."

The term 'Great Game' also refers to the intense geopolitical rivalry between the English and Russian empires over control of Central Asia during the whole of the 19th century [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia]. The period of this Great Game is thought to have ended in 1907, about the time of the book. The constant appearance of the Russians wherever the Chums go would appear to play on both this and on the coming Cold War conflict. The equation of all of these with Tetris suggests a common theme in all three 'non-violent' conflicts.

'''''Ice Pirates''''' 
This turn of phrase echoes the spoof [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ movie] of camraderie and dangerous "space herpes" that was released in 1984. There's no textual evidence that Pynchon means to refer to the movie, but the satirical humor and outlandish situations presented in the film might be attractive to someone with his sensibilities.

'''Tovarishchi Slutchainyi''' 
Tovarishchi translates as comrades; the literal translation of "Slutchainyi" is "accidental", leading to one possible reading of the phrase being: Chums of Chance. 
The phrase "Tovarishchi Slutchainyi" could also mean someone who is friends, but not intentionally, ie: perhaps people who are conscripted into a situation where they are forced to be communal. (Thanks to Anna Zaytseva for the idiomatic help!) 
A third reading is introduced when the homophonic correspondence between the final two syllables of Slutchainyi and Vice-President Cheney's name is noted. (Erhm, this doesn't work: the Russian word is sloo-CHIE-nee.)
:If the name were ''Tovarishchi Sluchainogo'' instead of as in the text, it would mean "Comrades of the Random," an exact parallel to the Chums.

'''trespassing upon their "sky-space" again''' 
A Soviet and Russian preoccupation, encroachment on their airspace by military or civilian flights.

'''nasal dislocation''' 
'Nose out of joint' = offended, feelings hurt.

==Page 124==

'''Na sobrat' ya po nebo!''' 
Randolph says "На собратья по небо." What I believe he means to say is
"Наши собратья по небу" or Nashi sobrat'ya po nebu, meaning "Our brothers/comrades of the sky"—perhaps a ritual greeting between the two groups. 
If aeronauts are like pilots, and they are--see ATD early---they feel and state a solidarity with others who fly. 
It is unlikely that Pynchon would make a mistake (the Russian in GR is correct) but Randolph might err. 
''Much'' of the Russian in ''GR'' is OK, not all, and somebody erred on page 123 when they made ''sluchainyi'' (singular) modify ''tovarishchi'' (plural).

==Page 125==
'''a ''roman-feuilleton'' by M. Eugène Sue''' 
A ''roman-feuilleton'' or serial novel. Eugène Sue (the "M." is for Monsieur = Mr.) was a French novelist roughly contemporary to Dumas père, with whom he has been compared. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Sue Wikipedia entry on Eugène Sue] Sue's most famous, which used to be a Modern Library title, is ''The Wandering Jew.''

'''into the Zone of Emergency''' 
Both the text and the theme are reminiscent of Slothrop's passage "into the Zone" in GR

'''red as a cursed ruby representing a third eye in the brow of some idol of the incomprehensible''' 
Seems too random to not be a reference to something...Very possibly; under the name T.Lopsang Rampa an Englishman published a thoroughly discredited spiritual autobiography called The Third Eye. The Third Eye, by Englishman Cyril Hoskin, a fantastic (and popular) tale of Tibetan spirit possession published in 1956; included telepathy and more.

In the 1940 version of "The Thief of Bagdad" the boy thief Abu (played by Sabu) must steal a magical "all-seeing eye" (ruby?) from the brow of a massive golden idol in a remote temple, in order to see - as in a crystal ball - the location of the Princess held in thrall by the evil vizier Jaffar.

'''Isafjörðr''' 
Town in the Westfjords of Iceland. Often spelled as Isafjörður, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ísafjörður Wikipedia]

'''The "extra man" of Arctic myth''' 

In his footnotes to "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot glosses the lines:

''Who is the third who walks always beside you?'' 
''When I count, there are only you and I together'' 
''But when I look ahead up the white road'' 
''There is always another one walking beside you'' 

with:

"The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted." [http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/wasteland/thunder.html]

See also [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackletonexped/dispatches/19991110.html NOVA Online: Shackleton's Antarctic Odyssey]
"Shackleton, for his part, attributed their astonishing success to something else: 'I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.' Worsley and Crean, uncannily, felt the same. When T. S. Eliot read Shackleton's account, he was inspired to write the passage at the head of this dispatch."

'''the true face''' 
Possible variant on Taoism's "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao" [http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/the-X-that-can-be-Y-is-not-the-true-X.html [cf]]

'''bonzoline''' 
Ivory substitute made from celluloid, used for billiard balls. [http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=bonzoline [cite]]

==Page 126==
'''inukshuk''' 
An inukshuk is a stone landmark used as a milestone or directional marker by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Circle, dominated by permafrost, has few natural landmarks and thus the inuksuk was central to navigation across the barren tundra. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk Wikipedia entry on Inukshuk]

'''a truth beyond the secular''' 
Pynchon's use of the word "secular" is unusual. He previously had the Chums striving "to minimize contamination of the secular" on [[ATD_97-118#Page_113|page 113]], and here the Chums try to glimpse "some expression of a truth beyond the secular." Neither of these statements makes much sense with the normal definitions in use today for "secular"-- what could this mean?
: I think it is likely that secular means quotidian, "of the day", visible, as opposed to the invisible and mysterious which pervades ATD.
:Yes, that is a good extension of the original meaning: of the ages, of an age—as opposed to "eternal."

'''Étienne-Louis Malus''' 
See [[ATD_97-118#Page_114|page 114]].

'''376 feet, 6 inches''' 
The same length as the WWII-era [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_class_destroyer Fletcher Class Destroyer].

'''They passed around rumors--the Captain was insane again, ice-pirates were hunting the ''Malus'' like whalers...''' 
This phrase seems evocative of ''Moby Dick'', not only in the intimation that the Captain might be insane and the rumors that might result, but also with the explicit references to "whalers" in the subsequent clause, "the subtle insanity of Ahab." ''Moby Dick'' of course contains many scenes when two whaling ships come together to exchange messages. Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," features particularly sinister omens. It is safe to say, however, that none of the captains who meets Ahab quite resembles Padzhitnoff or has a "signature" resembling the game of Tetris! Pynchon once again lightly tweaks the "line" linking his body of work to Melville's. ([[ATD_57-80#Page_73|page 73]])

==Page 127==

'''Constance Penhallow''' 
Hallow: to set apart as holy, to honor greatly. Her name then pairs the virtue of constancy with honoring the pen. Note also that her grandson, mentioned a few lines below, is named Hunter and is an artist--In the hunt for the consecrated pen.

Alternatively, the prefix ''pen-'' is Gaelic for ''head, principal,'' or ''chief,'' in which case the name would mean "Holiest." It is also Latin for ''nearly, almost'' (as in "penultimate" or "peninsula"), rendering the name "nearly holy." Given the Nordic origin of the Penhallow family, and the Germanic etymology of "hallow," the Gaelic prefix may be more likely. On the other hand, the Latinate prefix suggests the state of preterition -- not quite holy and perhaps not saved...

I don't see "Nordic" (although their fortune is derived from Nordic commerce). The prefix ''Pen-'' in a surname marks the family as Cornish in origin.

'''walled garden''' 
In the Christian iconographic traditions of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, a walled garden, or ''hortus conclusus'' signified both/either the Garden of Eden and/or Mary's virginity.

'''Harald the Ruthless''' 
Harald III Sigurdsson (1015 – September 25, 1066), later surnamed Harald Hardråde (meaning ruthless) was the king of Norway from 1047 until 1066. Harald was the last great Viking king of Norway and his invasion of England and death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 proved a true watershed moment. It marked the end of the Viking age. In Norway, Harald's death also marked the beginning of the Christian era. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_III_of_Norway Wikipedia entry on Harald the Ruthless]

'''Ginnungagap''' 
In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness" or "gaping gap") was a vast chasm that existed before the ordering of the world. To the north of Ginnungagap lay the intense cold of Niflheim, to the south the insufferable heat of Muspelheim. At the beginning of time, the two met in the Ginnungagap; and where the heat met the frost, the frost drops melted and formed the substance eitr, which quickened into life in the form of the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnungagap Wikipedia entry on Ginnungagap]

==Page 128==

'''Bay of Röerford''' 
Does not seem to exist, at least with this spelling.

'''Hunter Penhallow''' 
See above, Constance Penhallow.

'''lower-eighties''' 
Latitudes from 80N to 85N (mainly Ellesmere Island). [http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm [map]]

'''love''' 
The word is rare in Pynchon's work. Here it is linked to separation, the human theme of the novel.

==Page 129==

'''Meat Olaf''' 
Anagram.
:As a lesson on the dangers of over-interpretation: I asked a Norwegian friend whether this is truly a Norwegian dish, to which he replied "no," making me feel stupid. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

'''''¡Cuidado Cabrón! Salsa Explosiva La Original''''' 
Cabrón is an offensive word in Spanish meaning a guy who is an asshole/dick/cuckold, but friends can also call each other Cabrón in a joking manner. So, ''Watch-Out, Fucker! The Original Explosive Sauce''.
:There appears, in "''Explosiva La Original''," to be a suggestion of an originary explosion, i.e. the Big Bang.

==Page 130==

'''Tsangpo-Brahmaputra country''' 
The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.

'''Candlebrow University''' 
A fictional institute, created in the tradition of Lovecraft's Miskatonic University.

'''Quaternions''' 
In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry].

'''Fleetwood Vibe''' 
Fleetwood, like Scarsdale, is a wealthy suburb of New York City. Both communities are located in Westchester County, north of New York City.

'''bucket-shop''' 
Business designed to cheat people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop [Wikipedia]]

'''Flannelette''' 
Little washcloth. 
Flannelette is a soft fabric popular (in the UK at least) for pyjamas of a cosy but unsexy kind --[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 10:40, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Harriman... Schiff''' 
Railroad magnate and financier behind Northern Pacific Railroad, c1901. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Pacific_Railroad [Wikipedia]] [http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/eh_harriman.html Book on Harriman] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman Harriman Wikpedia Entry] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff Schiff Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 131==

'''"with oceangoing ships we left flat surfaces and went into Riemann space"''' 
One of Riemann's major contributions was the mathematics of manifolds, geometrical constructs that on a local scale appear to have fewer dimensions than they actually occupy. A standard example is the surface of the earth, which locally appears to be flat (2-dimensional), but in fact is curved (3-dimensional). Riemann's differential geometry quantifies the distortion produced by the curve of the surface.

'''Outer Hebrides''' 
or Western Isles comprise an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The population today is only 26,370, and there is no University.

==Page 132==

'''an ''additional axis'' whose unit is (-1)¹/²''' 
The usual form of representing a complex number ''z = b + ai'', (see below for explanation) graphically is by presenting its real part, ''b'', along the horizontal real axis and its imaginary part, ''a'', on the vertical imaginary (''additional'') axis of a Cartesian coordinate system. For a graph illustion of [http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jgraham/hypo/h13/images/image118.gif z = 1 + 2i].

'''complex number''' 
The complex number is of the form ''b + ai'', where ''a'' and ''b'' are real numbers and ''i'' is defined as the square root of -1, i.e. ''i'' = (-1)¹/². According to the definition, Cf page 133 Imaginary Number, ''ai'' is an imaginary number. Therefore, a complex number is a sum of real and imaginary numbers. Commonly, one use ''z'' to denote the whole expression ''b + ai'', i.e. ''z = b + ai''. And now ''z'' is called a complex number. Besides ''z'', the letter ''w'' is often used to denote complex numbers.

'''complex variable''' 
In mathematics, a 'variable' is a symbolic representation, usually a letter of the English (such as x and y), Greek or Roman alphabet, denoting an 'unkown' quantity which may vary during the course of calculation or investigation. For example, the speed of a jetliner,''v'', flying from Los Angeles to New York varies during the course of its flight. So,''v'' here is a variable. While 'c', the speed of light, unvaried, is a constant. In the algebraic equation y = ax² + bx + c where a, b and c are constants, x and y are ''variables''. When x and y involve complex numbers, then they are called complex variables.

'''''w = exp z''''' 
Here, ''w'' is a complex function, or a function of complex variables. ''exp z'' is the exponential function of ''z'' to the base ''e''. The expression ''w = exp z'' gives the relationship of the independent (complex) variable ''z'' to the dependent (complex) variable ''w'', i.e. mapping ''z'' onto ''w''. This relationship may not be one-to-one. The number ''e'' is the base of the natural logarithm, approximately equals to 2.71828. After ''Pi'', ''e'' is the most important
constant in mathematics. See the popular article about the history, definition and 10,000-place value of [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/e.html ''e''].

'''as Fitzgerald maintained, a shrinkage of dimension''' 
Irish physicist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_FitzGerald George FitzGerald] proposed a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction contraction of length] parallel to the direction of motion, to explain the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Quantitavely, the contraction is identical with the one predicted later by Einstein's special theory of relativity.

[http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/p200/str/str.html Here] is a concise and satisfying discussion of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century physics.

==Page 133==

'''Ynglingasaga''' 
See also Ynglinga Saga, or the story of the ancient Norse kings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ynglinga_saga Wikipedia entry]

'''''The Book of Iceland Spar''''', '''commonly described as "like the ''Ynglingasaga'' only different"''' 
" 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170)

'''... even of days not yet transpired.''' 
Reminiscent of the Borges short story "The Library of Babel" about an "infinite library" which contains every possible book. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_babel Wikipedia entry].

'''Imaginary Number''' 
Imaginary number is of the form ''ai'', where ''a'' is a real number, and ''i'' is defined such that ''i² = -1'', 
i.e. i = (-1)¹/² (sqare root of minus 1). For example, ''-16¹/²'', (square root of minus 16) is an imaginary number since it can be expressed as ''4i'' by definition. In the novel ''The Da Vinci Code'' (2003), the character Robert Langdon jokes that character Sophie Neveu "believes in the imaginary number ''i'' because it helps her break code". In Issac Asimov's short story ''The Imaginary'' (1942), eccentric psychologist Tan Porus explains the behavior of a mysterious species of squid by using imaginary numbers in the equations which describe its psychology.

==Page 134==

'''that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen''' 
Seems to echo Merle Rideout's theory on the "double refraction" of Blinky Morgan and Ed Morley from p.62. 
It's also a reference to the discussion of complex numbers in the previous pages, the implication being that the double refraction due to the Iceland Spar ("ninety-degree twist") puts the "Hidden People" into an imaginary space analogous to the imaginary axis of the space of complex numbers--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 12:55, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect''' 
Extraterrestrials, perhaps? "Visitors", in popular culture, is a term sometimes used to describe ETs. The alien race from the television miniseries ''V'' was named The Visitors. In the fictional world of ''South Park'', aliens are referred to as "visitors".

'''infinitesimal circle''' 
Cf p58. Reference to epsilon neighbourhoods, an essential tool in mathematical proofs.

'''bad ice''' 
Uneven ice formed by pressure, currents and wind in the dynamic Arctic environment

'''neutral-density gray''' 
Photography term. A neutral-density filter is designed to reduce the amount of light entering the lens without introducing a colour cast.

'''the sea-green, the ice-green, glass-green sea.''' 
In ''Ulysses'', James Joyce repeatedly describes the "snotgreen sea" (cf. Gabler edition, p. 4), itself an allusion to Homer's evocation of the "wine-dark sea". Cf., also, ATD, p.127: " . . . a green headland, sheer green walls of ice, the greenness nearest the water . . . . " In previous novels, Pynchon's use of color is almost always advised, as N.K. Hayles and M.B. Eiser note in their essay, "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow," in which green is frequently associated with the natural world, uncontaminated by humanity. 
Also, the repetition itself has a Joyceian feel.--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 13:52, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Narvik''' 
is a town in Norway, above the Arctic Circle.

==Page 135==

'''Mush-It-Away''' 
Takeaway (takeout fast food) for dogsledders.

==Page 136==

'''Venice of the Arctic''' 
Many cities have been compared with Venice in Italy, usually due to a high density of waterways (especially inner city canals) and/or maritime trade connections. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_nicknames#.27Venice_of_....27 Wikipedia entry on Venice of the X comparisons]

The Venice passage contains two themes that have appeared often in ''Against the Day'' so far: that of doubles (such as Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe, Randolph and his Russian counterpart, etc) and that of chance or randomness (the Chums, the meeting of Vibe and Walker, etc).

Also the double versions of the map of Asia, double versions of elements that can be seen when they are viewed with Iceland Spar.

And Pynchon seems to love Venice, a very positive place in one short story

'''Bauer-Grünewald''' 
Famous hotel in Venice.

'''kedgework''' 
A set of pilings used to move a ship by hauling on its mooring or anchoring lines.

==Page 138==

In the period of ATD, museums around the world sought spectacular meteorites, e.g. the Cape York meteorite recovered by Arctic explorer Robert Peary.
[http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/what/capeyork.php]

'''Nesselrode pudding''' 
From ''The Penguin Book of Food and Drink'', ed. Paul Levy: 
"An iced pudding flavoured with chestnuts and dried fruit was invented by Monsieur Mony, chef for many years to the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, in Paris [...] Glacé fruit and peel were a further embellishment to the Nesselrode by the time Proust was old enough to notice such things.

==Page 139==
'''Dr. Counterfly... bearded''' 
Last seen as a boy with low rank. Six years have elapsed, 1893-1899.

'''lenses proved to be...Nicol prisms''' 
A Nicol Prism is a device to produce polarized light. It is made from a crystal of calcite (Iceland spar), which is cut along a precisely determined plane and then cemented back together with Canada balsam. A picture can be found [http://web.grinnell.edu/physics/PMuseum/Nicol%20Prisms.html here], detailed diagrams of Nicol and other polarizing prisms are availabe [http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/polpri.html here].

:Glasses like the ones described here are used for viewing 3-D movies.

'''''nunatak''''' 
A nunatak (plural: nunataks) is a mountain top that is not covered by land ice (see glaciation and ice age), and protrudes out of a surrounding glacier. The wildlife on a nunatak can be isolated by the glacier, just like an island is in the ocean. Nunataks are generally angular and jagged because of freeze-thaw weathering, and can be seen to contrast strongly with the softer contours of the glacially eroded land below if the glacier retreats. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunatak [Wikipedia]]

Pynchon's translation, "land connected" would seem to be at 180 degrees to Wikipedia's "lonely peak". Which is correct?

==Page 140==

'''sensitive-flames''' 
The term has a specific technical meaning: [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Sensitive+flame External link]

'''a large brass speaking-trumpet''' 
Somewhat reminiscent of the ubiquitous W.A.S.T.E. symbolism in ''The Crying of Lot 49''.

[[image:Breguethands.jpg|thumb|Breguet hands|right]]'''Breguet-style arrowheads''' 
A distinctive fine watch of French design, usually with open circles ('moons') near the ends of the hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breguet_(watch) Wikipedia entry]

'''Poulsen's Telegraphone''' 
Invented in 1898, the first magnetic recording machine was patented by Valdemar Poulsen. The theory behind this machine was worked out theoretically by Oberlin Smith of the UK in 1888. Poulsen's machine recorded by passing a thin wire across an electromagnet. Each minute section of the wire would retain its electromagnetic charge, thus recording the sound. Sound could be both recorded and played back. Unfortunately, because the machine's output wasn't very loud and there was no way to amplify the signal, the Telegraphone was not much of a success. [http://www.wou.edu/las/creativearts/music/MUS%20206%20Text.pdf External link]

'''a human caul''' 
caul (Latin: Caput galeatum, literally, "head helmet") is a thin, filmy membrane, the remnants of the amniotic sac, that covers or partly covers the newborn mammal immediately after birth. It is also the membrane enclosing the paunch of mammals, particularly as in pork and mutton butchery. In butchery, the caul is used as offal. A third meaning refers to a type of women's headdress. The superstition attached to birth cauls has figured into numerous works of fiction, including ''David Copperfield,'' Stephen King's ''The Shining'' (wherein the child Danny Torrance, born with a caul, is possessed with the eponymous supernatural power), and Alan Moore's short graphic novel, ''The Birth Caul''.

==Page 141==

'''''camera lucida''''' 
A drawing aid sometimes used with an optical instrument; it is worthwhile to read the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida Wikipedia entry] in order to understand what's going on here.

'''misfortunes of certain Egyptologists''' 
Possibly a reference to the curse supposed to be attendant on the tomb of Tutankhamen, and upon which the death of George Herbert, who financed the expedition, was blamed. The tomb was breached in Feb 1923, though, and that seems later than this episode, so it may just be a reference to general myth. [http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/curse.htm [history]]

'''odalisque of the snows''' 
An odalisque was a virgin female slave who tended to the harem of the Turkish sultan. Numerous paintings of the 19th century portrayed them as reclining beauties. The most famous of these is Ingres' ''La grande odalisque'' (1814):

[[Image:odalisque.jpg|300px|center]]

'''mongoloid features''' 
Perhaps a reference to images of the Buddha, in which he is often seen reclining?

===Page 142===

'''we intrepid innocents . . . destiny."
This Vormance expedition calls to mind the 2004 film [http://imdb.com/title/tt0370263/ AVP: Alien Vs. Predator], in which an exploratory expedition funded by nefarious corporate elements discovers an ancient polar pyramid which they descend into, getting more than they bargain for in the process. Good stupid camp.

==Page 143==

'''Tungus''' 
Siberian language. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungusic_languages [Wikipedia]]

'''bilocation''' 
Doubtless to be an important concept in the novel, judging by the title of Part Three. Latin bis, twice, and locatio, place. Bilocation is as Pynchon explains, the ostensibly supernatural act of appearing or being in two or more locations simultaneously. Bilocation is claimed to have been experienced, and even practiced at will, by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, and magical adepts. Notably, Icelandic sagas also speak of warriors who were able to fall into a trance and appear thousands of miles away in battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation Wikipedia on bilocation] Is also obviously related to the physical properties of Iceland Spar.

'''Christian Time''' 
That is, linear time, a concept first introduced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo St. Augustine of Hippo] (354-430), in his autobiographical [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions/confessions.html ''Confessions'']. Augustine argued that the inevitability and singularity of Christ's return demanded that all history must be viewed as a linear progression toward the apocalypse and the ascendancy of Christ on Earth, after which time would effectively stop, an event described as the "End of Days." From this decidedly deterministic view of time, Augustine derived his doctrine of predestination, that is, of a world in which each soul, even as it is born, is already pre-defined as saved or unsaved. While the Catholic Church would eventually reject this doctrine, the protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin resurrected it, and it became an important part of Calvinist theology, notably as practiced by the Puritans.

==Page 144==

'''"we measured, and remeasured, and each time the dimensions kept coming out different - not just slightly so but drastically."''' 
Cf. Mark Danielewski's debut novel ''House Of Leaves'' (2000), where a house interior dimensions keep changing, while the exterior remains unaltered. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_leaves Wikipedia entry]

'''"its gaze had remained directed solely, personally, to each of us, no matter where we stood or moved."''' 
Supposedly a standard feature of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church portrait-icons.

'''Returned to harbor at last''' 
Not in Iceland but in the city from where the expedition first sailed.

==Page 145==

'''upstate security of Matteawan''' 
I.e., committed to the Matteawan Asylum at Fishkill, N.Y. Does this leave any doubt as to the name of the great city?

[[image:Evangelion.jpg|right|175px|thumb|The apocalyptic giant of light unearthed in the Arctic in Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'''the man-shaped light shall not deliver you''' 
Reminiscent of the famous Japanese anime ''Neon Genesis Evangelion'' (1994-95), in which mankind unearths a mysterious creature from the Arctic ice that appears as a man-shaped giant of light, gets out of man's control and triggers an apocalypse. Probably not an intentional reference, but if Pynchon plays Tetris, who knows? 
:-sinister variant of GR's Kirghiz Light? Those who see the Light find their words dismissed "as the meaningless sounds of a baby" (GR 358) just as witnesses to ATD's light are sent to the sanitorium. Note also the line's similarity to the Aqyn's warning from GR: "And the Light will never find you." (359)

c.f. the man-shaped light on 153

==Page 146==

'''lines''' 
The description of the single-file line at the train station basically describes current security conditions at American airports.
A single line (i.e. linear thinking) does not seem to be a 'positive' in the Pynchon world. (See too the slaughterhouse on page 10.)

'''Explorers' Club''' 
Apparently in South Africa (the famous NYC one wasn't founded until 1904).
:In Washington, D.C., though this doesn't help with the timing since the D.C. chapter wasn't formed till 1924. But "in Africa," "out there" and the word "British" in referring to the poet laureate—these all rule out Africa as the site.

'''Dr. Jim's little adventure''' 
A reference to the so-called "Jameson Raid" spearheaded by Dr. L. S. Jameson. The raid was intended to trigger an uprising among the British expatriate workers (the Uitlanders) in the Transvaal, but failed, and instead served to further destabilize the region and catalyze the Second Boer War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid Wikipedia entry] (From Wikipedia: “The Jameson Raid (December 29, 1895 - January 2, 1896) was a raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895-96. It was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so. The raid was ineffective and no uprising took place, but it did much to bring about the Second Boer War and the Second Matabele War.”)

'''"War any moment"''' 
The Second Boer War started in October 1899. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War [Wikipedia]]

'''the British poet-laureate’s commemorative verse''' 
Reference to Alfred Austin. From Wikipedia: “As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Austin Wikipedia entry]

The questionable rhyme referred to is from that “hasty poem” --

::They went across the veldt,
::As hard as they could pelt.

==Page 147==

'''Borchardt''' 
[[image:borchardt.jpg|thumb|200px|Borchardt pistol|right]]1894 forerunner of Luger.

'''Nansen''' 
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (1861-1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat. Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner. In 1893, he sailed to the Arctic in a ship which was deliberately allowed to drift north through the sea ice, a journey that took more than three years. During this first crossing of the Arctic Ocean the expedition became the first to discover the existence of a deep polar basin. When, after more than one year in the ice it became apparent that the ship would not reach the North Pole, Nansen continued north on foot and, in April 1895, reached 86° 14´ N, the highest latitude then attained. The two men were forced to spend the winter, surviving on walrus blubber and polar bear meat. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen Wikipedia entry on Nansen] Cf. p. 138.

'''Suppose it were to happen to us . . . an innocence they knew how to circumvent''' 
"Art" is supposed, among other things, to help us interpret our world. This passage is Art as brilliant and hardnosed as anything Goya or Picasso or Shostakovich ever created. Just one man's opinion. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:19, 5 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 148==

'''"Evolution. Ape evolves to man, well, what's the next step - human to what? Some ''compound organism'', the American Corporation, for instance"''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from William Gibson's 1981 short story "New Rose Hotel":

:Imagine an alien, Fox once said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has a look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.
:The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.

'''the American Corporation, for instance, in which even the Supreme Court has recognized legal personhood ''' 
Refers to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), during which Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad Wikipedia entry] Corporations are routinely recognized as "persons" in the law nowadays. For more on the recognition of corporation as legal persons, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Wikipedia entry on corporate personhood]. A recent documentary film, ''The Corporation'' (2003), tried to make the case that if a corporation is a "person," it has the personality of a psychopath.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 119-148

2007-02-13T20:35:50Z

Gobbag: /* Page 139 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 121==

'''flying bridge''' 
On an ordinary aquatic ship, the flying bridge is an open deck atop the pilothouse for navigating in good weather. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_bridge [Wikipedia]]

'''to measure and map . . . that mysterious mathematical lattice-work''' 
A big research area in satellite and earth sciences. For example, if you know to utmost accuracy how gravity varies in near-Earth space, you can predict the orbits of satellites used for navigation and positioning (i.e., GPS).

'''"Ray-rush"''' 
Cf contemporary telecom bandwidth auctions. "Ray-rush" as "Gold-rush"

==Page 122==

'''transfiguration unceasing''' 
Not just continuous change, but specifically changes in the observer's face as the colors and intensities shift.

'''iceblink''' 
Lightening of the underside of clouds over ice. A related phenomenon is "water sky," darkening of clouds over water. [http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/basics/phenomena/water_sky.html Photos of both.]

'''souls bound to the planetary lines of force, swept pole to pole''' 
In ''V,'' Mondaugen was stationed in South Africa to record "sferics" or "whistlers," a form of radio interference due to charged particles traveling along Earth's lines of magnetic force. Here, the planet being hollow, the field may be continuous, north-south on the outside and then south-north on the inside, and the lines may represent some other, nonmagnetic field.

'''dazzle-painting''' 
A camouflage painting technique used on WWI ships.[http://www.gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html].

'''intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska''' 
Perhaps a reference to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) site in Gakonka, AK, which is ostensibly engaged in ionospheric research [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp (Wikipedia entry)]. Also suggestive of the ECHELON network [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON (Wikipedia entry)], comprising a number of signals intelligence sites, which are capable of intercepting a wide variety of communications signals throughout the world. Also, Pynchon often creates humorous or fanciful acronyms: W.A.S.T.E. (''The Crying of Lot 49''), A.C.H.T.U.N.G. (''Gravity's Rainbow''), etc.

'''Lloyd's of the high spectrum [...] the next fateful Lutine announcement.''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutine HMS Lutine] (Lutine translates as "the tease") was a ship commissioned in the French Royal Navy which was later given to the English Royal Navy during the Revolution. In 1799 she sank in the North Sea while blockading Holland; her hold was full of gold. Lloyd's of London, an independent insurance market still known for being willing to assume large insurance risks for the right price, had insured the gold, and paid the claim in full, acquiring nominal ownership of the still-unsalvaged cargo. The ship's bell was recovered in the mid-19th century and hangs to this day in the Underwriting Room at Lloyd's. For many years the the Lutine Bell was struck to announce news of an overdue ship: once if lost, twice if reported safe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_of_London#Miscellaneous [Wikipedia]]

'''last eclipse''' 
Possibly Pike's Peak, 1878? [http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhistory/SEhistory.html (partial table)]

==Page 123==

'''lookout telegraph''' 
Instead of attaching Pugnax's tail directly to a hammer that hits the gong, the gong is struck remotely via a telegraph line.

'''Igor Padzhitnoff''' 
The whole passage that introduces the rival airship captain is a play on Tetris. Igor's surname is similar to that of the creator of Tetris, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Pazhitnov Alexey Pazhitnov]. Also, the captain himself serves "a program of mischief", flies a ship called "The Great Game" and drops "bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his "signature," to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors."

The term 'Great Game' also refers to the intense geopolitical rivalry between the English and Russian empires over control of Central Asia during the whole of the 19th century [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia]. The period of this Great Game is thought to have ended in 1907, about the time of the book. The constant appearance of the Russians wherever the Chums go would appear to play on both this and on the coming Cold War conflict. The equation of all of these with Tetris suggests a common theme in all three 'non-violent' conflicts.

'''''Ice Pirates''''' 
This turn of phrase echoes the spoof [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ movie] of camraderie and dangerous "space herpes" that was released in 1984. There's no textual evidence that Pynchon means to refer to the movie, but the satirical humor and outlandish situations presented in the film might be attractive to someone with his sensibilities.

'''Tovarishchi Slutchainyi''' 
Tovarishchi translates as comrades; the literal translation of "Slutchainyi" is "accidental", leading to one possible reading of the phrase being: Chums of Chance. 
The phrase "Tovarishchi Slutchainyi" could also mean someone who is friends, but not intentionally, ie: perhaps people who are conscripted into a situation where they are forced to be communal. (Thanks to Anna Zaytseva for the idiomatic help!) 
A third reading is introduced when the homophonic correspondence between the final two syllables of Slutchainyi and Vice-President Cheney's name is noted. (Erhm, this doesn't work: the Russian word is sloo-CHIE-nee.)
:If the name were ''Tovarishchi Sluchainogo'' instead of as in the text, it would mean "Comrades of the Random," an exact parallel to the Chums.

'''trespassing upon their "sky-space" again''' 
A Soviet and Russian preoccupation, encroachment on their airspace by military or civilian flights.

'''nasal dislocation''' 
'Nose out of joint' = offended, feelings hurt.

==Page 124==

'''Na sobrat' ya po nebo!''' 
Randolph says "На собратья по небо." What I believe he means to say is
"Наши собратья по небу" or Nashi sobrat'ya po nebu, meaning "Our brothers/comrades of the sky"—perhaps a ritual greeting between the two groups. 
If aeronauts are like pilots, and they are--see ATD early---they feel and state a solidarity with others who fly. 
It is unlikely that Pynchon would make a mistake (the Russian in GR is correct) but Randolph might err. 
''Much'' of the Russian in ''GR'' is OK, not all, and somebody erred on page 123 when they made ''sluchainyi'' (singular) modify ''tovarishchi'' (plural).

==Page 125==
'''a ''roman-feuilleton'' by M. Eugène Sue''' 
A ''roman-feuilleton'' or serial novel. Eugène Sue (the "M." is for Monsieur = Mr.) was a French novelist roughly contemporary to Dumas père, with whom he has been compared. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Sue Wikipedia entry on Eugène Sue] Sue's most famous, which used to be a Modern Library title, is ''The Wandering Jew.''

'''into the Zone of Emergency''' 
Both the text and the theme are reminiscent of Slothrop's passage "into the Zone" in GR

'''red as a cursed ruby representing a third eye in the brow of some idol of the incomprehensible''' 
Seems too random to not be a reference to something...Very possibly; under the name T.Lopsang Rampa an Englishman published a thoroughly discredited spiritual autobiography called The Third Eye. The Third Eye, by Englishman Cyril Hoskin, a fantastic (and popular) tale of Tibetan spirit possession published in 1956; included telepathy and more.

In the 1940 version of "The Thief of Bagdad" the boy thief Abu (played by Sabu) must steal a magical "all-seeing eye" (ruby?) from the brow of a massive golden idol in a remote temple, in order to see - as in a crystal ball - the location of the Princess held in thrall by the evil vizier Jaffar.

'''Isafjörðr''' 
Town in the Westfjords of Iceland. Often spelled as Isafjörður, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ísafjörður Wikipedia]

'''The "extra man" of Arctic myth''' 

In his footnotes to "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot glosses the lines:

''Who is the third who walks always beside you?'' 
''When I count, there are only you and I together'' 
''But when I look ahead up the white road'' 
''There is always another one walking beside you'' 

with:

"The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted." [http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/wasteland/thunder.html]

See also [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackletonexped/dispatches/19991110.html NOVA Online: Shackleton's Antarctic Odyssey]
"Shackleton, for his part, attributed their astonishing success to something else: 'I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.' Worsley and Crean, uncannily, felt the same. When T. S. Eliot read Shackleton's account, he was inspired to write the passage at the head of this dispatch."

'''the true face''' 
Possible variant on Taoism's "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao" [http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/the-X-that-can-be-Y-is-not-the-true-X.html [cf]]

'''bonzoline''' 
Ivory substitute made from celluloid, used for billiard balls. [http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=bonzoline [cite]]

==Page 126==
'''inukshuk''' 
An inukshuk is a stone landmark used as a milestone or directional marker by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Circle, dominated by permafrost, has few natural landmarks and thus the inuksuk was central to navigation across the barren tundra. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk Wikipedia entry on Inukshuk]

'''a truth beyond the secular''' 
Pynchon's use of the word "secular" is unusual. He previously had the Chums striving "to minimize contamination of the secular" on [[ATD_97-118#Page_113|page 113]], and here the Chums try to glimpse "some expression of a truth beyond the secular." Neither of these statements makes much sense with the normal definitions in use today for "secular"-- what could this mean?
: I think it is likely that secular means quotidian, "of the day", visible, as opposed to the invisible and mysterious which pervades ATD.
:Yes, that is a good extension of the original meaning: of the ages, of an age—as opposed to "eternal."

'''Étienne-Louis Malus''' 
See [[ATD_97-118#Page_114|page 114]].

'''376 feet, 6 inches''' 
The same length as the WWII-era [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_class_destroyer Fletcher Class Destroyer].

'''They passed around rumors--the Captain was insane again, ice-pirates were hunting the ''Malus'' like whalers...''' 
This phrase seems evocative of ''Moby Dick'', not only in the intimation that the Captain might be insane and the rumors that might result, but also with the explicit references to "whalers" in the subsequent clause, "the subtle insanity of Ahab." ''Moby Dick'' of course contains many scenes when two whaling ships come together to exchange messages. Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," features particularly sinister omens. It is safe to say, however, that none of the captains who meets Ahab quite resembles Padzhitnoff or has a "signature" resembling the game of Tetris! Pynchon once again lightly tweaks the "line" linking his body of work to Melville's. ([[ATD_57-80#Page_73|page 73]])

==Page 127==

'''Constance Penhallow''' 
Hallow: to set apart as holy, to honor greatly. Her name then pairs the virtue of constancy with honoring the pen. Note also that her grandson, mentioned a few lines below, is named Hunter and is an artist--In the hunt for the consecrated pen.

Alternatively, the prefix ''pen-'' is Gaelic for ''head, principal,'' or ''chief,'' in which case the name would mean "Holiest." It is also Latin for ''nearly, almost'' (as in "penultimate" or "peninsula"), rendering the name "nearly holy." Given the Nordic origin of the Penhallow family, and the Germanic etymology of "hallow," the Gaelic prefix may be more likely. On the other hand, the Latinate prefix suggests the state of preterition -- not quite holy and perhaps not saved...

I don't see "Nordic" (although their fortune is derived from Nordic commerce). The prefix ''Pen-'' in a surname marks the family as Cornish in origin.

'''walled garden''' 
In the Christian iconographic traditions of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, a walled garden, or ''hortus conclusus'' signified both/either the Garden of Eden and/or Mary's virginity.

'''Harald the Ruthless''' 
Harald III Sigurdsson (1015 – September 25, 1066), later surnamed Harald Hardråde (meaning ruthless) was the king of Norway from 1047 until 1066. Harald was the last great Viking king of Norway and his invasion of England and death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 proved a true watershed moment. It marked the end of the Viking age. In Norway, Harald's death also marked the beginning of the Christian era. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_III_of_Norway Wikipedia entry on Harald the Ruthless]

'''Ginnungagap''' 
In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness" or "gaping gap") was a vast chasm that existed before the ordering of the world. To the north of Ginnungagap lay the intense cold of Niflheim, to the south the insufferable heat of Muspelheim. At the beginning of time, the two met in the Ginnungagap; and where the heat met the frost, the frost drops melted and formed the substance eitr, which quickened into life in the form of the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnungagap Wikipedia entry on Ginnungagap]

==Page 128==

'''Bay of Röerford''' 
Does not seem to exist, at least with this spelling.

'''Hunter Penhallow''' 
See above, Constance Penhallow.

'''lower-eighties''' 
Latitudes from 80N to 85N (mainly Ellesmere Island). [http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm [map]]

'''love''' 
The word is rare in Pynchon's work. Here it is linked to separation, the human theme of the novel.

==Page 129==

'''Meat Olaf''' 
Anagram.
:As a lesson on the dangers of over-interpretation: I asked a Norwegian friend whether this is truly a Norwegian dish, to which he replied "no," making me feel stupid. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

'''''¡Cuidado Cabrón! Salsa Explosiva La Original''''' 
Cabrón is an offensive word in Spanish meaning a guy who is an asshole/dick/cuckold, but friends can also call each other Cabrón in a joking manner. So, ''Watch-Out, Fucker! The Original Explosive Sauce''.
:There appears, in "''Explosiva La Original''," to be a suggestion of an originary explosion, i.e. the Big Bang.

==Page 130==

'''Tsangpo-Brahmaputra country''' 
The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.

'''Candlebrow University''' 
A fictional institute, created in the tradition of Lovecraft's Miskatonic University.

'''Quaternions''' 
In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry].

'''Fleetwood Vibe''' 
Fleetwood, like Scarsdale, is a wealthy suburb of New York City. Both communities are located in Westchester County, north of New York City.

'''bucket-shop''' 
Business designed to cheat people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop [Wikipedia]]

'''Flannelette''' 
Little washcloth. 
Flannelette is a soft fabric popular (in the UK at least) for pyjamas of a cosy but unsexy kind --[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 10:40, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Harriman... Schiff''' 
Railroad magnate and financier behind Northern Pacific Railroad, c1901. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Pacific_Railroad [Wikipedia]] [http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/eh_harriman.html Book on Harriman] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman Harriman Wikpedia Entry] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff Schiff Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 131==

'''"with oceangoing ships we left flat surfaces and went into Riemann space"''' 
One of Riemann's major contributions was the mathematics of manifolds, geometrical constructs that on a local scale appear to have fewer dimensions than they actually occupy. A standard example is the surface of the earth, which locally appears to be flat (2-dimensional), but in fact is curved (3-dimensional). Riemann's differential geometry quantifies the distortion produced by the curve of the surface.

'''Outer Hebrides''' 
or Western Isles comprise an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The population today is only 26,370, and there is no University.

==Page 132==

'''an ''additional axis'' whose unit is (-1)¹/²''' 
The usual form of representing a complex number ''z = b + ai'', (see below for explanation) graphically is by presenting its real part, ''b'', along the horizontal real axis and its imaginary part, ''a'', on the vertical imaginary (''additional'') axis of a Cartesian coordinate system. For a graph illustion of [http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jgraham/hypo/h13/images/image118.gif z = 1 + 2i].

'''complex number''' 
The complex number is of the form ''b + ai'', where ''a'' and ''b'' are real numbers and ''i'' is defined as the square root of -1, i.e. ''i'' = (-1)¹/². According to the definition, Cf page 133 Imaginary Number, ''ai'' is an imaginary number. Therefore, a complex number is a sum of real and imaginary numbers. Commonly, one use ''z'' to denote the whole expression ''b + ai'', i.e. ''z = b + ai''. And now ''z'' is called a complex number. Besides ''z'', the letter ''w'' is often used to denote complex numbers.

'''complex variable''' 
In mathematics, a 'variable' is a symbolic representation, usually a letter of the English (such as x and y), Greek or Roman alphabet, denoting an 'unkown' quantity which may vary during the course of calculation or investigation. For example, the speed of a jetliner,''v'', flying from Los Angeles to New York varies during the course of its flight. So,''v'' here is a variable. While 'c', the speed of light, unvaried, is a constant. In the algebraic equation y = ax² + bx + c where a, b and c are constants, x and y are ''variables''. When x and y involve complex numbers, then they are called complex variables.

'''''w = exp z''''' 
Here, ''w'' is a complex function, or a function of complex variables. ''exp z'' is the exponential function of ''z'' to the base ''e''. The expression ''w = exp z'' gives the relationship of the independent (complex) variable ''z'' to the dependent (complex) variable ''w'', i.e. mapping ''z'' onto ''w''. This relationship may not be one-to-one. The number ''e'' is the base of the natural logarithm, approximately equals to 2.71828. After ''Pi'', ''e'' is the most important
constant in mathematics. See the popular article about the history, definition and 10,000-place value of [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/e.html ''e''].

'''as Fitzgerald maintained, a shrinkage of dimension''' 
Irish physicist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_FitzGerald George FitzGerald] proposed a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction contraction of length] parallel to the direction of motion, to explain the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Quantitavely, the contraction is identical with the one predicted later by Einstein's special theory of relativity.

[http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/p200/str/str.html Here] is a concise and satisfying discussion of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century physics.

==Page 133==

'''Ynglingasaga''' 
See also Ynglinga Saga, or the story of the ancient Norse kings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ynglinga_saga Wikipedia entry]

'''''The Book of Iceland Spar''''', '''commonly described as "like the ''Ynglingasaga'' only different"''' 
" 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170)

'''... even of days not yet transpired.''' 
Reminiscent of the Borges short story "The Library of Babel" about an "infinite library" which contains every possible book. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_babel Wikipedia entry].

'''Imaginary Number''' 
Imaginary number is of the form ''ai'', where ''a'' is a real number, and ''i'' is defined such that ''i² = -1'', 
i.e. i = (-1)¹/² (sqare root of minus 1). For example, ''-16¹/²'', (square root of minus 16) is an imaginary number since it can be expressed as ''4i'' by definition. In the novel ''The Da Vinci Code'' (2003), the character Robert Langdon jokes that character Sophie Neveu "believes in the imaginary number ''i'' because it helps her break code". In Issac Asimov's short story ''The Imaginary'' (1942), eccentric psychologist Tan Porus explains the behavior of a mysterious species of squid by using imaginary numbers in the equations which describe its psychology.

==Page 134==

'''that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen''' 
Seems to echo Merle Rideout's theory on the "double refraction" of Blinky Morgan and Ed Morley from p.62. 
It's also a reference to the discussion of complex numbers in the previous pages, the implication being that the double refraction due to the Iceland Spar ("ninety-degree twist") puts the "Hidden People" into an imaginary space analogous to the imaginary axis of the space of complex numbers--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 12:55, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect''' 
Extraterrestrials, perhaps? "Visitors", in popular culture, is a term sometimes used to describe ETs. The alien race from the television miniseries ''V'' was named The Visitors. In the fictional world of ''South Park'', aliens are referred to as "visitors".

'''infinitesimal circle''' 
Cf p58. Reference to epsilon neighbourhoods, an essential tool in mathematical proofs.

'''bad ice''' 
Uneven ice formed by pressure, currents and wind in the dynamic Arctic environment

'''neutral-density gray''' 
Photography term. A neutral-density filter is designed to reduce the amount of light entering the lens without introducing a colour cast.

'''the sea-green, the ice-green, glass-green sea.''' 
In ''Ulysses'', James Joyce repeatedly describes the "snotgreen sea" (cf. Gabler edition, p. 4), itself an allusion to Homer's evocation of the "wine-dark sea". Cf., also, ATD, p.127: " . . . a green headland, sheer green walls of ice, the greenness nearest the water . . . . " In previous novels, Pynchon's use of color is almost always advised, as N.K. Hayles and M.B. Eiser note in their essay, "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow," in which green is frequently associated with the natural world, uncontaminated by humanity. 
Also, the repetition itself has a Joyceian feel.--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 13:52, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Narvik''' 
is a town in Norway, above the Arctic Circle.

==Page 135==

'''Mush-It-Away''' 
Takeaway (takeout fast food) for dogsledders.

==Page 136==

'''Venice of the Arctic''' 
Many cities have been compared with Venice in Italy, usually due to a high density of waterways (especially inner city canals) and/or maritime trade connections. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_nicknames#.27Venice_of_....27 Wikipedia entry on Venice of the X comparisons]

The Venice passage contains two themes that have appeared often in ''Against the Day'' so far: that of doubles (such as Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe, Randolph and his Russian counterpart, etc) and that of chance or randomness (the Chums, the meeting of Vibe and Walker, etc).

Also the double versions of the map of Asia, double versions of elements that can be seen when they are viewed with Iceland Spar.

And Pynchon seems to love Venice, a very positive place in one short story

'''Bauer-Grünewald''' 
Famous hotel in Venice.

'''kedgework''' 
A set of pilings used to move a ship by hauling on its mooring or anchoring lines.

==Page 138==

In the period of ATD, museums around the world sought spectacular meteorites, e.g. the Cape York meteorite recovered by Arctic explorer Robert Peary.
[http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/what/capeyork.php]

'''Nesselrode pudding''' 
From ''The Penguin Book of Food and Drink'', ed. Paul Levy: 
"An iced pudding flavoured with chestnuts and dried fruit was invented by Monsieur Mony, chef for many years to the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, in Paris [...] Glacé fruit and peel were a further embellishment to the Nesselrode by the time Proust was old enough to notice such things.

==Page 139==
'''Dr. Counterfly... bearded''' 
Last seen as a boy with low rank. Six years have elapsed, 1893-1899.

'''lenses proved to be...Nicol prisms''' 
A Nicol Prism is a device to produce polarized light. It is made from a crystal of calcite (Iceland spar), which is cut along a precisely determined plane and then cemented back together with Canada balsam. A picture can be found [http://web.grinnell.edu/physics/PMuseum/Nicol%20Prisms.html here], detailed diagrams of Nicol and other polarizing prisms are availabe [http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/polpri.html here].

:Glasses like the ones described here are used for viewing 3-D movies.

'''''nunatak''''' 
A nunatak (plural: nunataks) is a mountain top that is not covered by land ice (see glaciation and ice age), and protrudes out of a surrounding glacier. The wildlife on a nunatak can be isolated by the glacier, just like an island is in the ocean. Nunataks are generally angular and jagged because of freeze-thaw weathering, and can be seen to contrast strongly with the softer contours of the glacially eroded land below if the glacier retreats. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunatak [Wikipedia]]

Pynchon's translation, "land connected" would seem to be at 180 degrees to Wikipedia's "lonely peak". Which is correct?

==Page 140==

'''a large brass speaking-trumpet''' 
Somewhat reminiscent of the ubiquitous W.A.S.T.E. symbolism in ''The Crying of Lot 49''.

[[image:Breguethands.jpg|thumb|Breguet hands|right]]'''Breguet-style arrowheads''' 
A distinctive fine watch of French design, usually with open circles ('moons') near the ends of the hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breguet_(watch) Wikipedia entry]

'''Poulsen's Telegraphone''' 
Invented in 1898, the first magnetic recording machine was patented by Valdemar Poulsen. The theory behind this machine was worked out theoretically by Oberlin Smith of the UK in 1888. Poulsen's machine recorded by passing a thin wire across an electromagnet. Each minute section of the wire would retain its electromagnetic charge, thus recording the sound. Sound could be both recorded and played back. Unfortunately, because the machine's output wasn't very loud and there was no way to amplify the signal, the Telegraphone was not much of a success. [http://www.wou.edu/las/creativearts/music/MUS%20206%20Text.pdf External link]

'''a human caul''' 
caul (Latin: Caput galeatum, literally, "head helmet") is a thin, filmy membrane, the remnants of the amniotic sac, that covers or partly covers the newborn mammal immediately after birth. It is also the membrane enclosing the paunch of mammals, particularly as in pork and mutton butchery. In butchery, the caul is used as offal. A third meaning refers to a type of women's headdress. The superstition attached to birth cauls has figured into numerous works of fiction, including ''David Copperfield,'' Stephen King's ''The Shining'' (wherein the child Danny Torrance, born with a caul, is possessed with the eponymous supernatural power), and Alan Moore's short graphic novel, ''The Birth Caul''.

==Page 141==

'''''camera lucida''''' 
A drawing aid sometimes used with an optical instrument; it is worthwhile to read the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida Wikipedia entry] in order to understand what's going on here.

'''misfortunes of certain Egyptologists''' 
Possibly a reference to the curse supposed to be attendant on the tomb of Tutankhamen, and upon which the death of George Herbert, who financed the expedition, was blamed. The tomb was breached in Feb 1923, though, and that seems later than this episode, so it may just be a reference to general myth. [http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/curse.htm [history]]

'''odalisque of the snows''' 
An odalisque was a virgin female slave who tended to the harem of the Turkish sultan. Numerous paintings of the 19th century portrayed them as reclining beauties. The most famous of these is Ingres' ''La grande odalisque'' (1814):

[[Image:odalisque.jpg|300px|center]]

'''mongoloid features''' 
Perhaps a reference to images of the Buddha, in which he is often seen reclining?

===Page 142===

'''we intrepid innocents . . . destiny."
This Vormance expedition calls to mind the 2004 film [http://imdb.com/title/tt0370263/ AVP: Alien Vs. Predator], in which an exploratory expedition funded by nefarious corporate elements discovers an ancient polar pyramid which they descend into, getting more than they bargain for in the process. Good stupid camp.

==Page 143==

'''Tungus''' 
Siberian language. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungusic_languages [Wikipedia]]

'''bilocation''' 
Doubtless to be an important concept in the novel, judging by the title of Part Three. Latin bis, twice, and locatio, place. Bilocation is as Pynchon explains, the ostensibly supernatural act of appearing or being in two or more locations simultaneously. Bilocation is claimed to have been experienced, and even practiced at will, by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, and magical adepts. Notably, Icelandic sagas also speak of warriors who were able to fall into a trance and appear thousands of miles away in battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation Wikipedia on bilocation] Is also obviously related to the physical properties of Iceland Spar.

'''Christian Time''' 
That is, linear time, a concept first introduced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo St. Augustine of Hippo] (354-430), in his autobiographical [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions/confessions.html ''Confessions'']. Augustine argued that the inevitability and singularity of Christ's return demanded that all history must be viewed as a linear progression toward the apocalypse and the ascendancy of Christ on Earth, after which time would effectively stop, an event described as the "End of Days." From this decidedly deterministic view of time, Augustine derived his doctrine of predestination, that is, of a world in which each soul, even as it is born, is already pre-defined as saved or unsaved. While the Catholic Church would eventually reject this doctrine, the protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin resurrected it, and it became an important part of Calvinist theology, notably as practiced by the Puritans.

==Page 144==

'''"we measured, and remeasured, and each time the dimensions kept coming out different - not just slightly so but drastically."''' 
Cf. Mark Danielewski's debut novel ''House Of Leaves'' (2000), where a house interior dimensions keep changing, while the exterior remains unaltered. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_leaves Wikipedia entry]

'''"its gaze had remained directed solely, personally, to each of us, no matter where we stood or moved."''' 
Supposedly a standard feature of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church portrait-icons.

'''Returned to harbor at last''' 
Not in Iceland but in the city from where the expedition first sailed.

==Page 145==

'''upstate security of Matteawan''' 
I.e., committed to the Matteawan Asylum at Fishkill, N.Y. Does this leave any doubt as to the name of the great city?

[[image:Evangelion.jpg|right|175px|thumb|The apocalyptic giant of light unearthed in the Arctic in Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'''the man-shaped light shall not deliver you''' 
Reminiscent of the famous Japanese anime ''Neon Genesis Evangelion'' (1994-95), in which mankind unearths a mysterious creature from the Arctic ice that appears as a man-shaped giant of light, gets out of man's control and triggers an apocalypse. Probably not an intentional reference, but if Pynchon plays Tetris, who knows? 
:-sinister variant of GR's Kirghiz Light? Those who see the Light find their words dismissed "as the meaningless sounds of a baby" (GR 358) just as witnesses to ATD's light are sent to the sanitorium. Note also the line's similarity to the Aqyn's warning from GR: "And the Light will never find you." (359)

c.f. the man-shaped light on 153

==Page 146==

'''lines''' 
The description of the single-file line at the train station basically describes current security conditions at American airports.
A single line (i.e. linear thinking) does not seem to be a 'positive' in the Pynchon world. (See too the slaughterhouse on page 10.)

'''Explorers' Club''' 
Apparently in South Africa (the famous NYC one wasn't founded until 1904).
:In Washington, D.C., though this doesn't help with the timing since the D.C. chapter wasn't formed till 1924. But "in Africa," "out there" and the word "British" in referring to the poet laureate—these all rule out Africa as the site.

'''Dr. Jim's little adventure''' 
A reference to the so-called "Jameson Raid" spearheaded by Dr. L. S. Jameson. The raid was intended to trigger an uprising among the British expatriate workers (the Uitlanders) in the Transvaal, but failed, and instead served to further destabilize the region and catalyze the Second Boer War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid Wikipedia entry] (From Wikipedia: “The Jameson Raid (December 29, 1895 - January 2, 1896) was a raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895-96. It was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so. The raid was ineffective and no uprising took place, but it did much to bring about the Second Boer War and the Second Matabele War.”)

'''"War any moment"''' 
The Second Boer War started in October 1899. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War [Wikipedia]]

'''the British poet-laureate’s commemorative verse''' 
Reference to Alfred Austin. From Wikipedia: “As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Austin Wikipedia entry]

The questionable rhyme referred to is from that “hasty poem” --

::They went across the veldt,
::As hard as they could pelt.

==Page 147==

'''Borchardt''' 
[[image:borchardt.jpg|thumb|200px|Borchardt pistol|right]]1894 forerunner of Luger.

'''Nansen''' 
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (1861-1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat. Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner. In 1893, he sailed to the Arctic in a ship which was deliberately allowed to drift north through the sea ice, a journey that took more than three years. During this first crossing of the Arctic Ocean the expedition became the first to discover the existence of a deep polar basin. When, after more than one year in the ice it became apparent that the ship would not reach the North Pole, Nansen continued north on foot and, in April 1895, reached 86° 14´ N, the highest latitude then attained. The two men were forced to spend the winter, surviving on walrus blubber and polar bear meat. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen Wikipedia entry on Nansen] Cf. p. 138.

'''Suppose it were to happen to us . . . an innocence they knew how to circumvent''' 
"Art" is supposed, among other things, to help us interpret our world. This passage is Art as brilliant and hardnosed as anything Goya or Picasso or Shostakovich ever created. Just one man's opinion. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:19, 5 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 148==

'''"Evolution. Ape evolves to man, well, what's the next step - human to what? Some ''compound organism'', the American Corporation, for instance"''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from William Gibson's 1981 short story "New Rose Hotel":

:Imagine an alien, Fox once said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has a look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.
:The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.

'''the American Corporation, for instance, in which even the Supreme Court has recognized legal personhood ''' 
Refers to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), during which Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad Wikipedia entry] Corporations are routinely recognized as "persons" in the law nowadays. For more on the recognition of corporation as legal persons, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Wikipedia entry on corporate personhood]. A recent documentary film, ''The Corporation'' (2003), tried to make the case that if a corporation is a "person," it has the personality of a psychopath.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 119-148

2007-02-13T20:28:56Z

Gobbag: /* Page 125 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 121==

'''flying bridge''' 
On an ordinary aquatic ship, the flying bridge is an open deck atop the pilothouse for navigating in good weather. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_bridge [Wikipedia]]

'''to measure and map . . . that mysterious mathematical lattice-work''' 
A big research area in satellite and earth sciences. For example, if you know to utmost accuracy how gravity varies in near-Earth space, you can predict the orbits of satellites used for navigation and positioning (i.e., GPS).

'''"Ray-rush"''' 
Cf contemporary telecom bandwidth auctions. "Ray-rush" as "Gold-rush"

==Page 122==

'''transfiguration unceasing''' 
Not just continuous change, but specifically changes in the observer's face as the colors and intensities shift.

'''iceblink''' 
Lightening of the underside of clouds over ice. A related phenomenon is "water sky," darkening of clouds over water. [http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/basics/phenomena/water_sky.html Photos of both.]

'''souls bound to the planetary lines of force, swept pole to pole''' 
In ''V,'' Mondaugen was stationed in South Africa to record "sferics" or "whistlers," a form of radio interference due to charged particles traveling along Earth's lines of magnetic force. Here, the planet being hollow, the field may be continuous, north-south on the outside and then south-north on the inside, and the lines may represent some other, nonmagnetic field.

'''dazzle-painting''' 
A camouflage painting technique used on WWI ships.[http://www.gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html].

'''intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska''' 
Perhaps a reference to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) site in Gakonka, AK, which is ostensibly engaged in ionospheric research [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp (Wikipedia entry)]. Also suggestive of the ECHELON network [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON (Wikipedia entry)], comprising a number of signals intelligence sites, which are capable of intercepting a wide variety of communications signals throughout the world. Also, Pynchon often creates humorous or fanciful acronyms: W.A.S.T.E. (''The Crying of Lot 49''), A.C.H.T.U.N.G. (''Gravity's Rainbow''), etc.

'''Lloyd's of the high spectrum [...] the next fateful Lutine announcement.''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutine HMS Lutine] (Lutine translates as "the tease") was a ship commissioned in the French Royal Navy which was later given to the English Royal Navy during the Revolution. In 1799 she sank in the North Sea while blockading Holland; her hold was full of gold. Lloyd's of London, an independent insurance market still known for being willing to assume large insurance risks for the right price, had insured the gold, and paid the claim in full, acquiring nominal ownership of the still-unsalvaged cargo. The ship's bell was recovered in the mid-19th century and hangs to this day in the Underwriting Room at Lloyd's. For many years the the Lutine Bell was struck to announce news of an overdue ship: once if lost, twice if reported safe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_of_London#Miscellaneous [Wikipedia]]

'''last eclipse''' 
Possibly Pike's Peak, 1878? [http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhistory/SEhistory.html (partial table)]

==Page 123==

'''lookout telegraph''' 
Instead of attaching Pugnax's tail directly to a hammer that hits the gong, the gong is struck remotely via a telegraph line.

'''Igor Padzhitnoff''' 
The whole passage that introduces the rival airship captain is a play on Tetris. Igor's surname is similar to that of the creator of Tetris, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Pazhitnov Alexey Pazhitnov]. Also, the captain himself serves "a program of mischief", flies a ship called "The Great Game" and drops "bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his "signature," to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors."

The term 'Great Game' also refers to the intense geopolitical rivalry between the English and Russian empires over control of Central Asia during the whole of the 19th century [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia]. The period of this Great Game is thought to have ended in 1907, about the time of the book. The constant appearance of the Russians wherever the Chums go would appear to play on both this and on the coming Cold War conflict. The equation of all of these with Tetris suggests a common theme in all three 'non-violent' conflicts.

'''''Ice Pirates''''' 
This turn of phrase echoes the spoof [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ movie] of camraderie and dangerous "space herpes" that was released in 1984. There's no textual evidence that Pynchon means to refer to the movie, but the satirical humor and outlandish situations presented in the film might be attractive to someone with his sensibilities.

'''Tovarishchi Slutchainyi''' 
Tovarishchi translates as comrades; the literal translation of "Slutchainyi" is "accidental", leading to one possible reading of the phrase being: Chums of Chance. 
The phrase "Tovarishchi Slutchainyi" could also mean someone who is friends, but not intentionally, ie: perhaps people who are conscripted into a situation where they are forced to be communal. (Thanks to Anna Zaytseva for the idiomatic help!) 
A third reading is introduced when the homophonic correspondence between the final two syllables of Slutchainyi and Vice-President Cheney's name is noted. (Erhm, this doesn't work: the Russian word is sloo-CHIE-nee.)
:If the name were ''Tovarishchi Sluchainogo'' instead of as in the text, it would mean "Comrades of the Random," an exact parallel to the Chums.

'''trespassing upon their "sky-space" again''' 
A Soviet and Russian preoccupation, encroachment on their airspace by military or civilian flights.

'''nasal dislocation''' 
'Nose out of joint' = offended, feelings hurt.

==Page 124==

'''Na sobrat' ya po nebo!''' 
Randolph says "На собратья по небо." What I believe he means to say is
"Наши собратья по небу" or Nashi sobrat'ya po nebu, meaning "Our brothers/comrades of the sky"—perhaps a ritual greeting between the two groups. 
If aeronauts are like pilots, and they are--see ATD early---they feel and state a solidarity with others who fly. 
It is unlikely that Pynchon would make a mistake (the Russian in GR is correct) but Randolph might err. 
''Much'' of the Russian in ''GR'' is OK, not all, and somebody erred on page 123 when they made ''sluchainyi'' (singular) modify ''tovarishchi'' (plural).

==Page 125==
'''a ''roman-feuilleton'' by M. Eugène Sue''' 
A ''roman-feuilleton'' or serial novel. Eugène Sue (the "M." is for Monsieur = Mr.) was a French novelist roughly contemporary to Dumas père, with whom he has been compared. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Sue Wikipedia entry on Eugène Sue] Sue's most famous, which used to be a Modern Library title, is ''The Wandering Jew.''

'''into the Zone of Emergency''' 
Both the text and the theme are reminiscent of Slothrop's passage "into the Zone" in GR

'''red as a cursed ruby representing a third eye in the brow of some idol of the incomprehensible''' 
Seems too random to not be a reference to something...Very possibly; under the name T.Lopsang Rampa an Englishman published a thoroughly discredited spiritual autobiography called The Third Eye. The Third Eye, by Englishman Cyril Hoskin, a fantastic (and popular) tale of Tibetan spirit possession published in 1956; included telepathy and more.

In the 1940 version of "The Thief of Bagdad" the boy thief Abu (played by Sabu) must steal a magical "all-seeing eye" (ruby?) from the brow of a massive golden idol in a remote temple, in order to see - as in a crystal ball - the location of the Princess held in thrall by the evil vizier Jaffar.

'''Isafjörðr''' 
Town in the Westfjords of Iceland. Often spelled as Isafjörður, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ísafjörður Wikipedia]

'''The "extra man" of Arctic myth''' 

In his footnotes to "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot glosses the lines:

''Who is the third who walks always beside you?'' 
''When I count, there are only you and I together'' 
''But when I look ahead up the white road'' 
''There is always another one walking beside you'' 

with:

"The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted." [http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/wasteland/thunder.html]

See also [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackletonexped/dispatches/19991110.html NOVA Online: Shackleton's Antarctic Odyssey]
"Shackleton, for his part, attributed their astonishing success to something else: 'I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.' Worsley and Crean, uncannily, felt the same. When T. S. Eliot read Shackleton's account, he was inspired to write the passage at the head of this dispatch."

'''the true face''' 
Possible variant on Taoism's "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao" [http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/the-X-that-can-be-Y-is-not-the-true-X.html [cf]]

'''bonzoline''' 
Ivory substitute made from celluloid, used for billiard balls. [http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=bonzoline [cite]]

==Page 126==
'''inukshuk''' 
An inukshuk is a stone landmark used as a milestone or directional marker by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Circle, dominated by permafrost, has few natural landmarks and thus the inuksuk was central to navigation across the barren tundra. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk Wikipedia entry on Inukshuk]

'''a truth beyond the secular''' 
Pynchon's use of the word "secular" is unusual. He previously had the Chums striving "to minimize contamination of the secular" on [[ATD_97-118#Page_113|page 113]], and here the Chums try to glimpse "some expression of a truth beyond the secular." Neither of these statements makes much sense with the normal definitions in use today for "secular"-- what could this mean?
: I think it is likely that secular means quotidian, "of the day", visible, as opposed to the invisible and mysterious which pervades ATD.
:Yes, that is a good extension of the original meaning: of the ages, of an age—as opposed to "eternal."

'''Étienne-Louis Malus''' 
See [[ATD_97-118#Page_114|page 114]].

'''376 feet, 6 inches''' 
The same length as the WWII-era [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_class_destroyer Fletcher Class Destroyer].

'''They passed around rumors--the Captain was insane again, ice-pirates were hunting the ''Malus'' like whalers...''' 
This phrase seems evocative of ''Moby Dick'', not only in the intimation that the Captain might be insane and the rumors that might result, but also with the explicit references to "whalers" in the subsequent clause, "the subtle insanity of Ahab." ''Moby Dick'' of course contains many scenes when two whaling ships come together to exchange messages. Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," features particularly sinister omens. It is safe to say, however, that none of the captains who meets Ahab quite resembles Padzhitnoff or has a "signature" resembling the game of Tetris! Pynchon once again lightly tweaks the "line" linking his body of work to Melville's. ([[ATD_57-80#Page_73|page 73]])

==Page 127==

'''Constance Penhallow''' 
Hallow: to set apart as holy, to honor greatly. Her name then pairs the virtue of constancy with honoring the pen. Note also that her grandson, mentioned a few lines below, is named Hunter and is an artist--In the hunt for the consecrated pen.

Alternatively, the prefix ''pen-'' is Gaelic for ''head, principal,'' or ''chief,'' in which case the name would mean "Holiest." It is also Latin for ''nearly, almost'' (as in "penultimate" or "peninsula"), rendering the name "nearly holy." Given the Nordic origin of the Penhallow family, and the Germanic etymology of "hallow," the Gaelic prefix may be more likely. On the other hand, the Latinate prefix suggests the state of preterition -- not quite holy and perhaps not saved...

I don't see "Nordic" (although their fortune is derived from Nordic commerce). The prefix ''Pen-'' in a surname marks the family as Cornish in origin.

'''walled garden''' 
In the Christian iconographic traditions of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, a walled garden, or ''hortus conclusus'' signified both/either the Garden of Eden and/or Mary's virginity.

'''Harald the Ruthless''' 
Harald III Sigurdsson (1015 – September 25, 1066), later surnamed Harald Hardråde (meaning ruthless) was the king of Norway from 1047 until 1066. Harald was the last great Viking king of Norway and his invasion of England and death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 proved a true watershed moment. It marked the end of the Viking age. In Norway, Harald's death also marked the beginning of the Christian era. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_III_of_Norway Wikipedia entry on Harald the Ruthless]

'''Ginnungagap''' 
In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness" or "gaping gap") was a vast chasm that existed before the ordering of the world. To the north of Ginnungagap lay the intense cold of Niflheim, to the south the insufferable heat of Muspelheim. At the beginning of time, the two met in the Ginnungagap; and where the heat met the frost, the frost drops melted and formed the substance eitr, which quickened into life in the form of the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnungagap Wikipedia entry on Ginnungagap]

==Page 128==

'''Bay of Röerford''' 
Does not seem to exist, at least with this spelling.

'''Hunter Penhallow''' 
See above, Constance Penhallow.

'''lower-eighties''' 
Latitudes from 80N to 85N (mainly Ellesmere Island). [http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm [map]]

'''love''' 
The word is rare in Pynchon's work. Here it is linked to separation, the human theme of the novel.

==Page 129==

'''Meat Olaf''' 
Anagram.
:As a lesson on the dangers of over-interpretation: I asked a Norwegian friend whether this is truly a Norwegian dish, to which he replied "no," making me feel stupid. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

'''''¡Cuidado Cabrón! Salsa Explosiva La Original''''' 
Cabrón is an offensive word in Spanish meaning a guy who is an asshole/dick/cuckold, but friends can also call each other Cabrón in a joking manner. So, ''Watch-Out, Fucker! The Original Explosive Sauce''.
:There appears, in "''Explosiva La Original''," to be a suggestion of an originary explosion, i.e. the Big Bang.

==Page 130==

'''Tsangpo-Brahmaputra country''' 
The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.

'''Candlebrow University''' 
A fictional institute, created in the tradition of Lovecraft's Miskatonic University.

'''Quaternions''' 
In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry].

'''Fleetwood Vibe''' 
Fleetwood, like Scarsdale, is a wealthy suburb of New York City. Both communities are located in Westchester County, north of New York City.

'''bucket-shop''' 
Business designed to cheat people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop [Wikipedia]]

'''Flannelette''' 
Little washcloth. 
Flannelette is a soft fabric popular (in the UK at least) for pyjamas of a cosy but unsexy kind --[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 10:40, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Harriman... Schiff''' 
Railroad magnate and financier behind Northern Pacific Railroad, c1901. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Pacific_Railroad [Wikipedia]] [http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/eh_harriman.html Book on Harriman] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman Harriman Wikpedia Entry] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff Schiff Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 131==

'''"with oceangoing ships we left flat surfaces and went into Riemann space"''' 
One of Riemann's major contributions was the mathematics of manifolds, geometrical constructs that on a local scale appear to have fewer dimensions than they actually occupy. A standard example is the surface of the earth, which locally appears to be flat (2-dimensional), but in fact is curved (3-dimensional). Riemann's differential geometry quantifies the distortion produced by the curve of the surface.

'''Outer Hebrides''' 
or Western Isles comprise an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The population today is only 26,370, and there is no University.

==Page 132==

'''an ''additional axis'' whose unit is (-1)¹/²''' 
The usual form of representing a complex number ''z = b + ai'', (see below for explanation) graphically is by presenting its real part, ''b'', along the horizontal real axis and its imaginary part, ''a'', on the vertical imaginary (''additional'') axis of a Cartesian coordinate system. For a graph illustion of [http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jgraham/hypo/h13/images/image118.gif z = 1 + 2i].

'''complex number''' 
The complex number is of the form ''b + ai'', where ''a'' and ''b'' are real numbers and ''i'' is defined as the square root of -1, i.e. ''i'' = (-1)¹/². According to the definition, Cf page 133 Imaginary Number, ''ai'' is an imaginary number. Therefore, a complex number is a sum of real and imaginary numbers. Commonly, one use ''z'' to denote the whole expression ''b + ai'', i.e. ''z = b + ai''. And now ''z'' is called a complex number. Besides ''z'', the letter ''w'' is often used to denote complex numbers.

'''complex variable''' 
In mathematics, a 'variable' is a symbolic representation, usually a letter of the English (such as x and y), Greek or Roman alphabet, denoting an 'unkown' quantity which may vary during the course of calculation or investigation. For example, the speed of a jetliner,''v'', flying from Los Angeles to New York varies during the course of its flight. So,''v'' here is a variable. While 'c', the speed of light, unvaried, is a constant. In the algebraic equation y = ax² + bx + c where a, b and c are constants, x and y are ''variables''. When x and y involve complex numbers, then they are called complex variables.

'''''w = exp z''''' 
Here, ''w'' is a complex function, or a function of complex variables. ''exp z'' is the exponential function of ''z'' to the base ''e''. The expression ''w = exp z'' gives the relationship of the independent (complex) variable ''z'' to the dependent (complex) variable ''w'', i.e. mapping ''z'' onto ''w''. This relationship may not be one-to-one. The number ''e'' is the base of the natural logarithm, approximately equals to 2.71828. After ''Pi'', ''e'' is the most important
constant in mathematics. See the popular article about the history, definition and 10,000-place value of [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/e.html ''e''].

'''as Fitzgerald maintained, a shrinkage of dimension''' 
Irish physicist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_FitzGerald George FitzGerald] proposed a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction contraction of length] parallel to the direction of motion, to explain the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Quantitavely, the contraction is identical with the one predicted later by Einstein's special theory of relativity.

[http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/p200/str/str.html Here] is a concise and satisfying discussion of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century physics.

==Page 133==

'''Ynglingasaga''' 
See also Ynglinga Saga, or the story of the ancient Norse kings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ynglinga_saga Wikipedia entry]

'''''The Book of Iceland Spar''''', '''commonly described as "like the ''Ynglingasaga'' only different"''' 
" 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170)

'''... even of days not yet transpired.''' 
Reminiscent of the Borges short story "The Library of Babel" about an "infinite library" which contains every possible book. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_babel Wikipedia entry].

'''Imaginary Number''' 
Imaginary number is of the form ''ai'', where ''a'' is a real number, and ''i'' is defined such that ''i² = -1'', 
i.e. i = (-1)¹/² (sqare root of minus 1). For example, ''-16¹/²'', (square root of minus 16) is an imaginary number since it can be expressed as ''4i'' by definition. In the novel ''The Da Vinci Code'' (2003), the character Robert Langdon jokes that character Sophie Neveu "believes in the imaginary number ''i'' because it helps her break code". In Issac Asimov's short story ''The Imaginary'' (1942), eccentric psychologist Tan Porus explains the behavior of a mysterious species of squid by using imaginary numbers in the equations which describe its psychology.

==Page 134==

'''that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen''' 
Seems to echo Merle Rideout's theory on the "double refraction" of Blinky Morgan and Ed Morley from p.62. 
It's also a reference to the discussion of complex numbers in the previous pages, the implication being that the double refraction due to the Iceland Spar ("ninety-degree twist") puts the "Hidden People" into an imaginary space analogous to the imaginary axis of the space of complex numbers--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 12:55, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect''' 
Extraterrestrials, perhaps? "Visitors", in popular culture, is a term sometimes used to describe ETs. The alien race from the television miniseries ''V'' was named The Visitors. In the fictional world of ''South Park'', aliens are referred to as "visitors".

'''infinitesimal circle''' 
Cf p58. Reference to epsilon neighbourhoods, an essential tool in mathematical proofs.

'''bad ice''' 
Uneven ice formed by pressure, currents and wind in the dynamic Arctic environment

'''neutral-density gray''' 
Photography term. A neutral-density filter is designed to reduce the amount of light entering the lens without introducing a colour cast.

'''the sea-green, the ice-green, glass-green sea.''' 
In ''Ulysses'', James Joyce repeatedly describes the "snotgreen sea" (cf. Gabler edition, p. 4), itself an allusion to Homer's evocation of the "wine-dark sea". Cf., also, ATD, p.127: " . . . a green headland, sheer green walls of ice, the greenness nearest the water . . . . " In previous novels, Pynchon's use of color is almost always advised, as N.K. Hayles and M.B. Eiser note in their essay, "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow," in which green is frequently associated with the natural world, uncontaminated by humanity. 
Also, the repetition itself has a Joyceian feel.--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 13:52, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Narvik''' 
is a town in Norway, above the Arctic Circle.

==Page 135==

'''Mush-It-Away''' 
Takeaway (takeout fast food) for dogsledders.

==Page 136==

'''Venice of the Arctic''' 
Many cities have been compared with Venice in Italy, usually due to a high density of waterways (especially inner city canals) and/or maritime trade connections. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_nicknames#.27Venice_of_....27 Wikipedia entry on Venice of the X comparisons]

The Venice passage contains two themes that have appeared often in ''Against the Day'' so far: that of doubles (such as Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe, Randolph and his Russian counterpart, etc) and that of chance or randomness (the Chums, the meeting of Vibe and Walker, etc).

Also the double versions of the map of Asia, double versions of elements that can be seen when they are viewed with Iceland Spar.

And Pynchon seems to love Venice, a very positive place in one short story

'''Bauer-Grünewald''' 
Famous hotel in Venice.

'''kedgework''' 
A set of pilings used to move a ship by hauling on its mooring or anchoring lines.

==Page 138==

In the period of ATD, museums around the world sought spectacular meteorites, e.g. the Cape York meteorite recovered by Arctic explorer Robert Peary.
[http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/what/capeyork.php]

'''Nesselrode pudding''' 
From ''The Penguin Book of Food and Drink'', ed. Paul Levy: 
"An iced pudding flavoured with chestnuts and dried fruit was invented by Monsieur Mony, chef for many years to the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, in Paris [...] Glacé fruit and peel were a further embellishment to the Nesselrode by the time Proust was old enough to notice such things.

==Page 139==
'''Dr. Counterfly... bearded''' 
Last seen as a boy with low rank. Six years have elapsed, 1893-1899.

'''lenses proved to be...Nicol prisms''' 
A Nicol Prism is a device to produce polarized light. It is made from a crystal of calcite (Iceland spar), which is cut along a precisely determined plane and then cemented back together with Canada balsam. A picture can be found [http://web.grinnell.edu/physics/PMuseum/Nicol%20Prisms.html here], detailed diagrams of Nicol and other polarizing prisms are availabe [http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/polpri.html here].

:Glasses like the ones described here are used for viewing 3-D movies.

'''''nunatak''''' 
A nunatak (plural: nunataks) is a mountain top that is not covered by land ice (see glaciation and ice age), and protrudes out of a surrounding glacier. The wildlife on a nunatak can be isolated by the glacier, just like an island is in the ocean. Nunataks are generally angular and jagged because of freeze-thaw weathering, and can be seen to contrast strongly with the softer contours of the glacially eroded land below if the glacier retreats. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunatak [Wikipedia]]

==Page 140==

'''a large brass speaking-trumpet''' 
Somewhat reminiscent of the ubiquitous W.A.S.T.E. symbolism in ''The Crying of Lot 49''.

[[image:Breguethands.jpg|thumb|Breguet hands|right]]'''Breguet-style arrowheads''' 
A distinctive fine watch of French design, usually with open circles ('moons') near the ends of the hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breguet_(watch) Wikipedia entry]

'''Poulsen's Telegraphone''' 
Invented in 1898, the first magnetic recording machine was patented by Valdemar Poulsen. The theory behind this machine was worked out theoretically by Oberlin Smith of the UK in 1888. Poulsen's machine recorded by passing a thin wire across an electromagnet. Each minute section of the wire would retain its electromagnetic charge, thus recording the sound. Sound could be both recorded and played back. Unfortunately, because the machine's output wasn't very loud and there was no way to amplify the signal, the Telegraphone was not much of a success. [http://www.wou.edu/las/creativearts/music/MUS%20206%20Text.pdf External link]

'''a human caul''' 
caul (Latin: Caput galeatum, literally, "head helmet") is a thin, filmy membrane, the remnants of the amniotic sac, that covers or partly covers the newborn mammal immediately after birth. It is also the membrane enclosing the paunch of mammals, particularly as in pork and mutton butchery. In butchery, the caul is used as offal. A third meaning refers to a type of women's headdress. The superstition attached to birth cauls has figured into numerous works of fiction, including ''David Copperfield,'' Stephen King's ''The Shining'' (wherein the child Danny Torrance, born with a caul, is possessed with the eponymous supernatural power), and Alan Moore's short graphic novel, ''The Birth Caul''.

==Page 141==

'''''camera lucida''''' 
A drawing aid sometimes used with an optical instrument; it is worthwhile to read the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida Wikipedia entry] in order to understand what's going on here.

'''misfortunes of certain Egyptologists''' 
Possibly a reference to the curse supposed to be attendant on the tomb of Tutankhamen, and upon which the death of George Herbert, who financed the expedition, was blamed. The tomb was breached in Feb 1923, though, and that seems later than this episode, so it may just be a reference to general myth. [http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/curse.htm [history]]

'''odalisque of the snows''' 
An odalisque was a virgin female slave who tended to the harem of the Turkish sultan. Numerous paintings of the 19th century portrayed them as reclining beauties. The most famous of these is Ingres' ''La grande odalisque'' (1814):

[[Image:odalisque.jpg|300px|center]]

'''mongoloid features''' 
Perhaps a reference to images of the Buddha, in which he is often seen reclining?

===Page 142===

'''we intrepid innocents . . . destiny."
This Vormance expedition calls to mind the 2004 film [http://imdb.com/title/tt0370263/ AVP: Alien Vs. Predator], in which an exploratory expedition funded by nefarious corporate elements discovers an ancient polar pyramid which they descend into, getting more than they bargain for in the process. Good stupid camp.

==Page 143==

'''Tungus''' 
Siberian language. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungusic_languages [Wikipedia]]

'''bilocation''' 
Doubtless to be an important concept in the novel, judging by the title of Part Three. Latin bis, twice, and locatio, place. Bilocation is as Pynchon explains, the ostensibly supernatural act of appearing or being in two or more locations simultaneously. Bilocation is claimed to have been experienced, and even practiced at will, by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, and magical adepts. Notably, Icelandic sagas also speak of warriors who were able to fall into a trance and appear thousands of miles away in battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation Wikipedia on bilocation] Is also obviously related to the physical properties of Iceland Spar.

'''Christian Time''' 
That is, linear time, a concept first introduced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo St. Augustine of Hippo] (354-430), in his autobiographical [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions/confessions.html ''Confessions'']. Augustine argued that the inevitability and singularity of Christ's return demanded that all history must be viewed as a linear progression toward the apocalypse and the ascendancy of Christ on Earth, after which time would effectively stop, an event described as the "End of Days." From this decidedly deterministic view of time, Augustine derived his doctrine of predestination, that is, of a world in which each soul, even as it is born, is already pre-defined as saved or unsaved. While the Catholic Church would eventually reject this doctrine, the protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin resurrected it, and it became an important part of Calvinist theology, notably as practiced by the Puritans.

==Page 144==

'''"we measured, and remeasured, and each time the dimensions kept coming out different - not just slightly so but drastically."''' 
Cf. Mark Danielewski's debut novel ''House Of Leaves'' (2000), where a house interior dimensions keep changing, while the exterior remains unaltered. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_leaves Wikipedia entry]

'''"its gaze had remained directed solely, personally, to each of us, no matter where we stood or moved."''' 
Supposedly a standard feature of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church portrait-icons.

'''Returned to harbor at last''' 
Not in Iceland but in the city from where the expedition first sailed.

==Page 145==

'''upstate security of Matteawan''' 
I.e., committed to the Matteawan Asylum at Fishkill, N.Y. Does this leave any doubt as to the name of the great city?

[[image:Evangelion.jpg|right|175px|thumb|The apocalyptic giant of light unearthed in the Arctic in Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'''the man-shaped light shall not deliver you''' 
Reminiscent of the famous Japanese anime ''Neon Genesis Evangelion'' (1994-95), in which mankind unearths a mysterious creature from the Arctic ice that appears as a man-shaped giant of light, gets out of man's control and triggers an apocalypse. Probably not an intentional reference, but if Pynchon plays Tetris, who knows? 
:-sinister variant of GR's Kirghiz Light? Those who see the Light find their words dismissed "as the meaningless sounds of a baby" (GR 358) just as witnesses to ATD's light are sent to the sanitorium. Note also the line's similarity to the Aqyn's warning from GR: "And the Light will never find you." (359)

c.f. the man-shaped light on 153

==Page 146==

'''lines''' 
The description of the single-file line at the train station basically describes current security conditions at American airports.
A single line (i.e. linear thinking) does not seem to be a 'positive' in the Pynchon world. (See too the slaughterhouse on page 10.)

'''Explorers' Club''' 
Apparently in South Africa (the famous NYC one wasn't founded until 1904).
:In Washington, D.C., though this doesn't help with the timing since the D.C. chapter wasn't formed till 1924. But "in Africa," "out there" and the word "British" in referring to the poet laureate—these all rule out Africa as the site.

'''Dr. Jim's little adventure''' 
A reference to the so-called "Jameson Raid" spearheaded by Dr. L. S. Jameson. The raid was intended to trigger an uprising among the British expatriate workers (the Uitlanders) in the Transvaal, but failed, and instead served to further destabilize the region and catalyze the Second Boer War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid Wikipedia entry] (From Wikipedia: “The Jameson Raid (December 29, 1895 - January 2, 1896) was a raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895-96. It was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so. The raid was ineffective and no uprising took place, but it did much to bring about the Second Boer War and the Second Matabele War.”)

'''"War any moment"''' 
The Second Boer War started in October 1899. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War [Wikipedia]]

'''the British poet-laureate’s commemorative verse''' 
Reference to Alfred Austin. From Wikipedia: “As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Austin Wikipedia entry]

The questionable rhyme referred to is from that “hasty poem” --

::They went across the veldt,
::As hard as they could pelt.

==Page 147==

'''Borchardt''' 
[[image:borchardt.jpg|thumb|200px|Borchardt pistol|right]]1894 forerunner of Luger.

'''Nansen''' 
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (1861-1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat. Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner. In 1893, he sailed to the Arctic in a ship which was deliberately allowed to drift north through the sea ice, a journey that took more than three years. During this first crossing of the Arctic Ocean the expedition became the first to discover the existence of a deep polar basin. When, after more than one year in the ice it became apparent that the ship would not reach the North Pole, Nansen continued north on foot and, in April 1895, reached 86° 14´ N, the highest latitude then attained. The two men were forced to spend the winter, surviving on walrus blubber and polar bear meat. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen Wikipedia entry on Nansen] Cf. p. 138.

'''Suppose it were to happen to us . . . an innocence they knew how to circumvent''' 
"Art" is supposed, among other things, to help us interpret our world. This passage is Art as brilliant and hardnosed as anything Goya or Picasso or Shostakovich ever created. Just one man's opinion. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:19, 5 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 148==

'''"Evolution. Ape evolves to man, well, what's the next step - human to what? Some ''compound organism'', the American Corporation, for instance"''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from William Gibson's 1981 short story "New Rose Hotel":

:Imagine an alien, Fox once said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has a look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.
:The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.

'''the American Corporation, for instance, in which even the Supreme Court has recognized legal personhood ''' 
Refers to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), during which Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad Wikipedia entry] Corporations are routinely recognized as "persons" in the law nowadays. For more on the recognition of corporation as legal persons, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Wikipedia entry on corporate personhood]. A recent documentary film, ''The Corporation'' (2003), tried to make the case that if a corporation is a "person," it has the personality of a psychopath.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 119-148

2007-02-11T21:52:58Z

Gobbag: /* Page 134 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 121==

'''flying bridge''' 
On an ordinary aquatic ship, the flying bridge is an open deck atop the pilothouse for navigating in good weather. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_bridge [Wikipedia]]

'''to measure and map . . . that mysterious mathematical lattice-work''' 
A big research area in satellite and earth sciences. For example, if you know to utmost accuracy how gravity varies in near-Earth space, you can predict the orbits of satellites used for navigation and positioning (i.e., GPS).

'''"Ray-rush"''' 
Cf contemporary telecom bandwidth auctions. "Ray-rush" as "Gold-rush"

==Page 122==

'''transfiguration unceasing''' 
Not just continuous change, but specifically changes in the observer's face as the colors and intensities shift.

'''iceblink''' 
Lightening of the underside of clouds over ice. A related phenomenon is "water sky," darkening of clouds over water. [http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/basics/phenomena/water_sky.html Photos of both.]

'''souls bound to the planetary lines of force, swept pole to pole''' 
In ''V,'' Mondaugen was stationed in South Africa to record "sferics" or "whistlers," a form of radio interference due to charged particles traveling along Earth's lines of magnetic force. Here, the planet being hollow, the field may be continuous, north-south on the outside and then south-north on the inside, and the lines may represent some other, nonmagnetic field.

'''dazzle-painting''' 
A camouflage painting technique used on WWI ships.[http://www.gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html].

'''intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska''' 
Perhaps a reference to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) site in Gakonka, AK, which is ostensibly engaged in ionospheric research [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp (Wikipedia entry)]. Also suggestive of the ECHELON network [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON (Wikipedia entry)], comprising a number of signals intelligence sites, which are capable of intercepting a wide variety of communications signals throughout the world. Also, Pynchon often creates humorous or fanciful acronyms: W.A.S.T.E. (''The Crying of Lot 49''), A.C.H.T.U.N.G. (''Gravity's Rainbow''), etc.

'''Lloyd's of the high spectrum [...] the next fateful Lutine announcement.''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutine HMS Lutine] (Lutine translates as "the tease") was a ship commissioned in the French Royal Navy which was later given to the English Royal Navy during the Revolution. In 1799 she sank in the North Sea while blockading Holland; her hold was full of gold. Lloyd's of London, an independent insurance market still known for being willing to assume large insurance risks for the right price, had insured the gold, and paid the claim in full, acquiring nominal ownership of the still-unsalvaged cargo. The ship's bell was recovered in the mid-19th century and hangs to this day in the Underwriting Room at Lloyd's. For many years the the Lutine Bell was struck to announce news of an overdue ship: once if lost, twice if reported safe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_of_London#Miscellaneous [Wikipedia]]

'''last eclipse''' 
Possibly Pike's Peak, 1878? [http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhistory/SEhistory.html (partial table)]

==Page 123==

'''lookout telegraph''' 
Instead of attaching Pugnax's tail directly to a hammer that hits the gong, the gong is struck remotely via a telegraph line.

'''Igor Padzhitnoff''' 
The whole passage that introduces the rival airship captain is a play on Tetris. Igor's surname is similar to that of the creator of Tetris, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Pazhitnov Alexey Pazhitnov]. Also, the captain himself serves "a program of mischief", flies a ship called "The Great Game" and drops "bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his "signature," to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors."

The term 'Great Game' also refers to the intense geopolitical rivalry between the English and Russian empires over control of Central Asia during the whole of the 19th century [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia]. The period of this Great Game is thought to have ended in 1907, about the time of the book. The constant appearance of the Russians wherever the Chums go would appear to play on both this and on the coming Cold War conflict. The equation of all of these with Tetris suggests a common theme in all three 'non-violent' conflicts.

'''''Ice Pirates''''' 
This turn of phrase echoes the spoof [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ movie] of camraderie and dangerous "space herpes" that was released in 1984. There's no textual evidence that Pynchon means to refer to the movie, but the satirical humor and outlandish situations presented in the film might be attractive to someone with his sensibilities.

'''Tovarishchi Slutchainyi''' 
Tovarishchi translates as comrades; the literal translation of "Slutchainyi" is "accidental", leading to one possible reading of the phrase being: Chums of Chance. 
The phrase "Tovarishchi Slutchainyi" could also mean someone who is friends, but not intentionally, ie: perhaps people who are conscripted into a situation where they are forced to be communal. (Thanks to Anna Zaytseva for the idiomatic help!) 
A third reading is introduced when the homophonic correspondence between the final two syllables of Slutchainyi and Vice-President Cheney's name is noted. (Erhm, this doesn't work: the Russian word is sloo-CHIE-nee.)
:If the name were ''Tovarishchi Sluchainogo'' instead of as in the text, it would mean "Comrades of the Random," an exact parallel to the Chums.

'''trespassing upon their "sky-space" again''' 
A Soviet and Russian preoccupation, encroachment on their airspace by military or civilian flights.

'''nasal dislocation''' 
'Nose out of joint' = offended, feelings hurt.

==Page 124==

'''Na sobrat' ya po nebo!''' 
Randolph says "На собратья по небо." What I believe he means to say is
"Наши собратья по небу" or Nashi sobrat'ya po nebu, meaning "Our brothers/comrades of the sky"—perhaps a ritual greeting between the two groups. 
If aeronauts are like pilots, and they are--see ATD early---they feel and state a solidarity with others who fly. 
It is unlikely that Pynchon would make a mistake (the Russian in GR is correct) but Randolph might err. 
''Much'' of the Russian in ''GR'' is OK, not all, and somebody erred on page 123 when they made ''sluchainyi'' (singular) modify ''tovarishchi'' (plural).

==Page 125==
'''a ''roman-feuilleton'' by M. Eugène Sue''' 
A ''roman-feuilleton'' or serial novel. Eugène Sue (the "M." is for Monsieur = Mr.) was a French novelist roughly contemporary to Dumas père, with whom he has been compared. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Sue Wikipedia entry on Eugène Sue] Sue's most famous, which used to be a Modern Library title, is ''The Wandering Jew.''

'''red as a cursed ruby representing a third eye in the brow of some idol of the incomprehensible''' 
Seems too random to not be a reference to something...Very possibly; under the name T.Lopsang Rampa an Englishman published a thoroughly discredited spiritual autobiography called The Third Eye. The Third Eye, by Englishman Cyril Hoskin, a fantastic (and popular) tale of Tibetan spirit possession published in 1956; included telepathy and more.

In the 1940 version of "The Thief of Bagdad" the boy thief Abu (played by Sabu) must steal a magical "all-seeing eye" (ruby?) from the brow of a massive golden idol in a remote temple, in order to see - as in a crystal ball - the location of the Princess held in thrall by the evil vizier Jaffar.

'''Isafjörðr''' 
Town in the Westfjords of Iceland. Often spelled as Isafjörður, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ísafjörður Wikipedia]

'''The "extra man" of Arctic myth''' 

In his footnotes to "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot glosses the lines:

''Who is the third who walks always beside you?'' 
''When I count, there are only you and I together'' 
''But when I look ahead up the white road'' 
''There is always another one walking beside you'' 

with:

"The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted." [http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/wasteland/thunder.html]

See also [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackletonexped/dispatches/19991110.html NOVA Online: Shackleton's Antarctic Odyssey]
"Shackleton, for his part, attributed their astonishing success to something else: 'I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.' Worsley and Crean, uncannily, felt the same. When T. S. Eliot read Shackleton's account, he was inspired to write the passage at the head of this dispatch."

'''the true face''' 
Possible variant on Taoism's "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao" [http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/the-X-that-can-be-Y-is-not-the-true-X.html [cf]]

'''bonzoline''' 
Ivory substitute made from celluloid, used for billiard balls. [http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=bonzoline [cite]]

==Page 126==
'''inukshuk''' 
An inukshuk is a stone landmark used as a milestone or directional marker by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Circle, dominated by permafrost, has few natural landmarks and thus the inuksuk was central to navigation across the barren tundra. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk Wikipedia entry on Inukshuk]

'''a truth beyond the secular''' 
Pynchon's use of the word "secular" is unusual. He previously had the Chums striving "to minimize contamination of the secular" on [[ATD_97-118#Page_113|page 113]], and here the Chums try to glimpse "some expression of a truth beyond the secular." Neither of these statements makes much sense with the normal definitions in use today for "secular"-- what could this mean?
: I think it is likely that secular means quotidian, "of the day", visible, as opposed to the invisible and mysterious which pervades ATD.
:Yes, that is a good extension of the original meaning: of the ages, of an age—as opposed to "eternal."

'''Étienne-Louis Malus''' 
See [[ATD_97-118#Page_114|page 114]].

'''376 feet, 6 inches''' 
The same length as the WWII-era [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_class_destroyer Fletcher Class Destroyer].

'''They passed around rumors--the Captain was insane again, ice-pirates were hunting the ''Malus'' like whalers...''' 
This phrase seems evocative of ''Moby Dick'', not only in the intimation that the Captain might be insane and the rumors that might result, but also with the explicit references to "whalers" in the subsequent clause, "the subtle insanity of Ahab." ''Moby Dick'' of course contains many scenes when two whaling ships come together to exchange messages. Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," features particularly sinister omens. It is safe to say, however, that none of the captains who meets Ahab quite resembles Padzhitnoff or has a "signature" resembling the game of Tetris! Pynchon once again lightly tweaks the "line" linking his body of work to Melville's. ([[ATD_57-80#Page_73|page 73]])

==Page 127==

'''Constance Penhallow''' 
Hallow: to set apart as holy, to honor greatly. Her name then pairs the virtue of constancy with honoring the pen. Note also that her grandson, mentioned a few lines below, is named Hunter and is an artist--In the hunt for the consecrated pen.

Alternatively, the prefix ''pen-'' is Gaelic for ''head, principal,'' or ''chief,'' in which case the name would mean "Holiest." It is also Latin for ''nearly, almost'' (as in "penultimate" or "peninsula"), rendering the name "nearly holy." Given the Nordic origin of the Penhallow family, and the Germanic etymology of "hallow," the Gaelic prefix may be more likely. On the other hand, the Latinate prefix suggests the state of preterition -- not quite holy and perhaps not saved...

I don't see "Nordic" (although their fortune is derived from Nordic commerce). The prefix ''Pen-'' in a surname marks the family as Cornish in origin.

'''walled garden''' 
In the Christian iconographic traditions of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, a walled garden, or ''hortus conclusus'' signified both/either the Garden of Eden and/or Mary's virginity.

'''Harald the Ruthless''' 
Harald III Sigurdsson (1015 – September 25, 1066), later surnamed Harald Hardråde (meaning ruthless) was the king of Norway from 1047 until 1066. Harald was the last great Viking king of Norway and his invasion of England and death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 proved a true watershed moment. It marked the end of the Viking age. In Norway, Harald's death also marked the beginning of the Christian era. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_III_of_Norway Wikipedia entry on Harald the Ruthless]

'''Ginnungagap''' 
In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness" or "gaping gap") was a vast chasm that existed before the ordering of the world. To the north of Ginnungagap lay the intense cold of Niflheim, to the south the insufferable heat of Muspelheim. At the beginning of time, the two met in the Ginnungagap; and where the heat met the frost, the frost drops melted and formed the substance eitr, which quickened into life in the form of the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnungagap Wikipedia entry on Ginnungagap]

==Page 128==

'''Bay of Röerford''' 
Does not seem to exist, at least with this spelling.

'''Hunter Penhallow''' 
See above, Constance Penhallow.

'''lower-eighties''' 
Latitudes from 80N to 85N (mainly Ellesmere Island). [http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm [map]]

'''love''' 
The word is rare in Pynchon's work. Here it is linked to separation, the human theme of the novel.

==Page 129==

'''Meat Olaf''' 
Anagram.
:As a lesson on the dangers of over-interpretation: I asked a Norwegian friend whether this is truly a Norwegian dish, to which he replied "no," making me feel stupid. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

'''''¡Cuidado Cabrón! Salsa Explosiva La Original''''' 
Cabrón is an offensive word in Spanish meaning a guy who is an asshole/dick/cuckold, but friends can also call each other Cabrón in a joking manner. So, ''Watch-Out, Fucker! The Original Explosive Sauce''.
:There appears, in "''Explosiva La Original''," to be a suggestion of an originary explosion, i.e. the Big Bang.

==Page 130==

'''Tsangpo-Brahmaputra country''' 
The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.

'''Candlebrow University''' 
A fictional institute, created in the tradition of Lovecraft's Miskatonic University.

'''Quaternions''' 
In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry].

'''Fleetwood Vibe''' 
Fleetwood, like Scarsdale, is a wealthy suburb of New York City. Both communities are located in Westchester County, north of New York City.

'''bucket-shop''' 
Business designed to cheat people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop [Wikipedia]]

'''Flannelette''' 
Little washcloth. 
Flannelette is a soft fabric popular (in the UK at least) for pyjamas of a cosy but unsexy kind --[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 10:40, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Harriman... Schiff''' 
Railroad magnate and financier behind Northern Pacific Railroad, c1901. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Pacific_Railroad [Wikipedia]] [http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/eh_harriman.html Book on Harriman] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman Harriman Wikpedia Entry] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff Schiff Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 131==

'''"with oceangoing ships we left flat surfaces and went into Riemann space"''' 
One of Riemann's major contributions was the mathematics of manifolds, geometrical constructs that on a local scale appear to have fewer dimensions than they actually occupy. A standard example is the surface of the earth, which locally appears to be flat (2-dimensional), but in fact is curved (3-dimensional). Riemann's differential geometry quantifies the distortion produced by the curve of the surface.

'''Outer Hebrides''' 
or Western Isles comprise an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The population today is only 26,370, and there is no University.

==Page 132==

'''an ''additional axis'' whose unit is (-1)¹/²''' 
The usual form of representing a complex number ''z = b + ai'', (see below for explanation) graphically is by presenting its real part, ''b'', along the horizontal real axis and its imaginary part, ''a'', on the vertical imaginary (''additional'') axis of a Cartesian coordinate system. For a graph illustion of [http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jgraham/hypo/h13/images/image118.gif z = 1 + 2i].

'''complex number''' 
The complex number is of the form ''b + ai'', where ''a'' and ''b'' are real numbers and ''i'' is defined as the square root of -1, i.e. ''i'' = (-1)¹/². According to the definition, Cf page 133 Imaginary Number, ''ai'' is an imaginary number. Therefore, a complex number is a sum of real and imaginary numbers. Commonly, one use ''z'' to denote the whole expression ''b + ai'', i.e. ''z = b + ai''. And now ''z'' is called a complex number. Besides ''z'', the letter ''w'' is often used to denote complex numbers.

'''complex variable''' 
In mathematics, a 'variable' is a symbolic representation, usually a letter of the English (such as x and y), Greek or Roman alphabet, denoting an 'unkown' quantity which may vary during the course of calculation or investigation. For example, the speed of a jetliner,''v'', flying from Los Angeles to New York varies during the course of its flight. So,''v'' here is a variable. While 'c', the speed of light, unvaried, is a constant. In the algebraic equation y = ax² + bx + c where a, b and c are constants, x and y are ''variables''. When x and y involve complex numbers, then they are called complex variables.

'''''w = exp z''''' 
Here, ''w'' is a complex function, or a function of complex variables. ''exp z'' is the exponential function of ''z'' to the base ''e''. The expression ''w = exp z'' gives the relationship of the independent (complex) variable ''z'' to the dependent (complex) variable ''w'', i.e. mapping ''z'' onto ''w''. This relationship may not be one-to-one. The number ''e'' is the base of the natural logarithm, approximately equals to 2.71828. After ''Pi'', ''e'' is the most important
constant in mathematics. See the popular article about the history, definition and 10,000-place value of [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/e.html ''e''].

'''as Fitzgerald maintained, a shrinkage of dimension''' 
Irish physicist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_FitzGerald George FitzGerald] proposed a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction contraction of length] parallel to the direction of motion, to explain the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Quantitavely, the contraction is identical with the one predicted later by Einstein's special theory of relativity.

[http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/p200/str/str.html Here] is a concise and satisfying discussion of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century physics.

==Page 133==

'''Ynglingasaga''' 
See also Ynglinga Saga, or the story of the ancient Norse kings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ynglinga_saga Wikipedia entry]

'''''The Book of Iceland Spar''''', '''commonly described as "like the ''Ynglingasaga'' only different"''' 
" 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170)

'''... even of days not yet transpired.''' 
Reminiscent of the Borges short story "The Library of Babel" about an "infinite library" which contains every possible book. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_babel Wikipedia entry].

'''Imaginary Number''' 
Imaginary number is of the form ''ai'', where ''a'' is a real number, and ''i'' is defined such that ''i² = -1'', 
i.e. i = (-1)¹/² (sqare root of minus 1). For example, ''-16¹/²'', (square root of minus 16) is an imaginary number since it can be expressed as ''4i'' by definition. In the novel ''The Da Vinci Code'' (2003), the character Robert Langdon jokes that character Sophie Neveu "believes in the imaginary number ''i'' because it helps her break code". In Issac Asimov's short story ''The Imaginary'' (1942), eccentric psychologist Tan Porus explains the behavior of a mysterious species of squid by using imaginary numbers in the equations which describe its psychology.

==Page 134==

'''that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen''' 
Seems to echo Merle Rideout's theory on the "double refraction" of Blinky Morgan and Ed Morley from p.62. 
It's also a reference to the discussion of complex numbers in the previous pages, the implication being that the double refraction due to the Iceland Spar ("ninety-degree twist") puts the "Hidden People" into an imaginary space analogous to the imaginary axis of the space of complex numbers--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 12:55, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect''' 
Extraterrestrials, perhaps? "Visitors", in popular culture, is a term sometimes used to describe ETs. The alien race from the television miniseries ''V'' was named The Visitors. In the fictional world of ''South Park'', aliens are referred to as "visitors".

'''infinitesimal circle''' 
Cf p58. Reference to epsilon neighbourhoods, an essential tool in mathematical proofs.

'''bad ice''' 
Uneven ice formed by pressure, currents and wind in the dynamic Arctic environment

'''neutral-density gray''' 
Photography term. A neutral-density filter is designed to reduce the amount of light entering the lens without introducing a colour cast.

'''the sea-green, the ice-green, glass-green sea.''' 
In ''Ulysses'', James Joyce repeatedly describes the "snotgreen sea" (cf. Gabler edition, p. 4), itself an allusion to Homer's evocation of the "wine-dark sea". Cf., also, ATD, p.127: " . . . a green headland, sheer green walls of ice, the greenness nearest the water . . . . " In previous novels, Pynchon's use of color is almost always advised, as N.K. Hayles and M.B. Eiser note in their essay, "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow," in which green is frequently associated with the natural world, uncontaminated by humanity. 
Also, the repetition itself has a Joyceian feel.--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 13:52, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Narvik''' 
is a town in Norway, above the Arctic Circle.

==Page 135==

'''Mush-It-Away''' 
Takeaway (takeout fast food) for dogsledders.

==Page 136==

'''Venice of the Arctic''' 
Many cities have been compared with Venice in Italy, usually due to a high density of waterways (especially inner city canals) and/or maritime trade connections. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_nicknames#.27Venice_of_....27 Wikipedia entry on Venice of the X comparisons]

The Venice passage contains two themes that have appeared often in ''Against the Day'' so far: that of doubles (such as Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe, Randolph and his Russian counterpart, etc) and that of chance or randomness (the Chums, the meeting of Vibe and Walker, etc).

Also the double versions of the map of Asia, double versions of elements that can be seen when they are viewed with Iceland Spar.

And Pynchon seems to love Venice, a very positive place in one short story

'''Bauer-Grünewald''' 
Famous hotel in Venice.

'''kedgework''' 
A set of pilings used to move a ship by hauling on its mooring or anchoring lines.

==Page 138==

In the period of ATD, museums around the world sought spectacular meteorites, e.g. the Cape York meteorite recovered by Arctic explorer Robert Peary.
[http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/what/capeyork.php]

'''Nesselrode pudding''' 
From ''The Penguin Book of Food and Drink'', ed. Paul Levy: 
"An iced pudding flavoured with chestnuts and dried fruit was invented by Monsieur Mony, chef for many years to the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, in Paris [...] Glacé fruit and peel were a further embellishment to the Nesselrode by the time Proust was old enough to notice such things.

==Page 139==
'''Dr. Counterfly... bearded''' 
Last seen as a boy with low rank. Six years have elapsed, 1893-1899.

'''lenses proved to be...Nicol prisms''' 
A Nicol Prism is a device to produce polarized light. It is made from a crystal of calcite (Iceland spar), which is cut along a precisely determined plane and then cemented back together with Canada balsam. A picture can be found [http://web.grinnell.edu/physics/PMuseum/Nicol%20Prisms.html here], detailed diagrams of Nicol and other polarizing prisms are availabe [http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/polpri.html here].

:Glasses like the ones described here are used for viewing 3-D movies.

'''''nunatak''''' 
A nunatak (plural: nunataks) is a mountain top that is not covered by land ice (see glaciation and ice age), and protrudes out of a surrounding glacier. The wildlife on a nunatak can be isolated by the glacier, just like an island is in the ocean. Nunataks are generally angular and jagged because of freeze-thaw weathering, and can be seen to contrast strongly with the softer contours of the glacially eroded land below if the glacier retreats. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunatak [Wikipedia]]

==Page 140==

'''a large brass speaking-trumpet''' 
Somewhat reminiscent of the ubiquitous W.A.S.T.E. symbolism in ''The Crying of Lot 49''.

[[image:Breguethands.jpg|thumb|Breguet hands|right]]'''Breguet-style arrowheads''' 
A distinctive fine watch of French design, usually with open circles ('moons') near the ends of the hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breguet_(watch) Wikipedia entry]

'''Poulsen's Telegraphone''' 
Invented in 1898, the first magnetic recording machine was patented by Valdemar Poulsen. The theory behind this machine was worked out theoretically by Oberlin Smith of the UK in 1888. Poulsen's machine recorded by passing a thin wire across an electromagnet. Each minute section of the wire would retain its electromagnetic charge, thus recording the sound. Sound could be both recorded and played back. Unfortunately, because the machine's output wasn't very loud and there was no way to amplify the signal, the Telegraphone was not much of a success. [http://www.wou.edu/las/creativearts/music/MUS%20206%20Text.pdf External link]

'''a human caul''' 
caul (Latin: Caput galeatum, literally, "head helmet") is a thin, filmy membrane, the remnants of the amniotic sac, that covers or partly covers the newborn mammal immediately after birth. It is also the membrane enclosing the paunch of mammals, particularly as in pork and mutton butchery. In butchery, the caul is used as offal. A third meaning refers to a type of women's headdress. The superstition attached to birth cauls has figured into numerous works of fiction, including ''David Copperfield,'' Stephen King's ''The Shining'' (wherein the child Danny Torrance, born with a caul, is possessed with the eponymous supernatural power), and Alan Moore's short graphic novel, ''The Birth Caul''.

==Page 141==

'''''camera lucida''''' 
A drawing aid sometimes used with an optical instrument; it is worthwhile to read the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida Wikipedia entry] in order to understand what's going on here.

'''misfortunes of certain Egyptologists''' 
Possibly a reference to the curse supposed to be attendant on the tomb of Tutankhamen, and upon which the death of George Herbert, who financed the expedition, was blamed. The tomb was breached in Feb 1923, though, and that seems later than this episode, so it may just be a reference to general myth. [http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/curse.htm [history]]

'''odalisque of the snows''' 
An odalisque was a virgin female slave who tended to the harem of the Turkish sultan. Numerous paintings of the 19th century portrayed them as reclining beauties. The most famous of these is Ingres' ''La grande odalisque'' (1814):

[[Image:odalisque.jpg|300px|center]]

'''mongoloid features''' 
Perhaps a reference to images of the Buddha, in which he is often seen reclining?

===Page 142===

'''we intrepid innocents . . . destiny."
This Vormance expedition calls to mind the 2004 film [http://imdb.com/title/tt0370263/ AVP: Alien Vs. Predator], in which an exploratory expedition funded by nefarious corporate elements discovers an ancient polar pyramid which they descend into, getting more than they bargain for in the process. Good stupid camp.

==Page 143==

'''Tungus''' 
Siberian language. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungusic_languages [Wikipedia]]

'''bilocation''' 
Doubtless to be an important concept in the novel, judging by the title of Part Three. Latin bis, twice, and locatio, place. Bilocation is as Pynchon explains, the ostensibly supernatural act of appearing or being in two or more locations simultaneously. Bilocation is claimed to have been experienced, and even practiced at will, by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, and magical adepts. Notably, Icelandic sagas also speak of warriors who were able to fall into a trance and appear thousands of miles away in battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation Wikipedia on bilocation] Is also obviously related to the physical properties of Iceland Spar.

'''Christian Time''' 
That is, linear time, a concept first introduced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo St. Augustine of Hippo] (354-430), in his autobiographical [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions/confessions.html ''Confessions'']. Augustine argued that the inevitability and singularity of Christ's return demanded that all history must be viewed as a linear progression toward the apocalypse and the ascendancy of Christ on Earth, after which time would effectively stop, an event described as the "End of Days." From this decidedly deterministic view of time, Augustine derived his doctrine of predestination, that is, of a world in which each soul, even as it is born, is already pre-defined as saved or unsaved. While the Catholic Church would eventually reject this doctrine, the protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin resurrected it, and it became an important part of Calvinist theology, notably as practiced by the Puritans.

==Page 144==

'''"we measured, and remeasured, and each time the dimensions kept coming out different - not just slightly so but drastically."''' 
Cf. Mark Danielewski's debut novel ''House Of Leaves'' (2000), where a house interior dimensions keep changing, while the exterior remains unaltered. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_leaves Wikipedia entry]

'''"its gaze had remained directed solely, personally, to each of us, no matter where we stood or moved."''' 
Supposedly a standard feature of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church portrait-icons.

'''Returned to harbor at last''' 
Not in Iceland but in the city from where the expedition first sailed.

==Page 145==

'''upstate security of Matteawan''' 
I.e., committed to the Matteawan Asylum at Fishkill, N.Y. Does this leave any doubt as to the name of the great city?

[[image:Evangelion.jpg|right|175px|thumb|The apocalyptic giant of light unearthed in the Arctic in Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'''the man-shaped light shall not deliver you''' 
Reminiscent of the famous Japanese anime ''Neon Genesis Evangelion'' (1994-95), in which mankind unearths a mysterious creature from the Arctic ice that appears as a man-shaped giant of light, gets out of man's control and triggers an apocalypse. Probably not an intentional reference, but if Pynchon plays Tetris, who knows? 
:-sinister variant of GR's Kirghiz Light? Those who see the Light find their words dismissed "as the meaningless sounds of a baby" (GR 358) just as witnesses to ATD's light are sent to the sanitorium. Note also the line's similarity to the Aqyn's warning from GR: "And the Light will never find you." (359)

c.f. the man-shaped light on 153

==Page 146==

'''lines''' 
The description of the single-file line at the train station basically describes current security conditions at American airports.
A single line (i.e. linear thinking) does not seem to be a 'positive' in the Pynchon world. (See too the slaughterhouse on page 10.)

'''Explorers' Club''' 
Apparently in South Africa (the famous NYC one wasn't founded until 1904).
:In Washington, D.C., though this doesn't help with the timing since the D.C. chapter wasn't formed till 1924. But "in Africa," "out there" and the word "British" in referring to the poet laureate—these all rule out Africa as the site.

'''Dr. Jim's little adventure''' 
A reference to the so-called "Jameson Raid" spearheaded by Dr. L. S. Jameson. The raid was intended to trigger an uprising among the British expatriate workers (the Uitlanders) in the Transvaal, but failed, and instead served to further destabilize the region and catalyze the Second Boer War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid Wikipedia entry] (From Wikipedia: “The Jameson Raid (December 29, 1895 - January 2, 1896) was a raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895-96. It was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so. The raid was ineffective and no uprising took place, but it did much to bring about the Second Boer War and the Second Matabele War.”)

'''"War any moment"''' 
The Second Boer War started in October 1899. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War [Wikipedia]]

'''the British poet-laureate’s commemorative verse''' 
Reference to Alfred Austin. From Wikipedia: “As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Austin Wikipedia entry]

The questionable rhyme referred to is from that “hasty poem” --

::They went across the veldt,
::As hard as they could pelt.

==Page 147==

'''Borchardt''' 
[[image:borchardt.jpg|thumb|200px|Borchardt pistol|right]]1894 forerunner of Luger.

'''Nansen''' 
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (1861-1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat. Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner. In 1893, he sailed to the Arctic in a ship which was deliberately allowed to drift north through the sea ice, a journey that took more than three years. During this first crossing of the Arctic Ocean the expedition became the first to discover the existence of a deep polar basin. When, after more than one year in the ice it became apparent that the ship would not reach the North Pole, Nansen continued north on foot and, in April 1895, reached 86° 14´ N, the highest latitude then attained. The two men were forced to spend the winter, surviving on walrus blubber and polar bear meat. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen Wikipedia entry on Nansen] Cf. p. 138.

'''Suppose it were to happen to us . . . an innocence they knew how to circumvent''' 
"Art" is supposed, among other things, to help us interpret our world. This passage is Art as brilliant and hardnosed as anything Goya or Picasso or Shostakovich ever created. Just one man's opinion. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:19, 5 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 148==

'''"Evolution. Ape evolves to man, well, what's the next step - human to what? Some ''compound organism'', the American Corporation, for instance"''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from William Gibson's 1981 short story "New Rose Hotel":

:Imagine an alien, Fox once said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has a look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.
:The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.

'''the American Corporation, for instance, in which even the Supreme Court has recognized legal personhood ''' 
Refers to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), during which Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad Wikipedia entry] Corporations are routinely recognized as "persons" in the law nowadays. For more on the recognition of corporation as legal persons, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Wikipedia entry on corporate personhood]. A recent documentary film, ''The Corporation'' (2003), tried to make the case that if a corporation is a "person," it has the personality of a psychopath.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 119-148

2007-02-11T21:49:26Z

Gobbag: /* Page 134 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 121==

'''flying bridge''' 
On an ordinary aquatic ship, the flying bridge is an open deck atop the pilothouse for navigating in good weather. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_bridge [Wikipedia]]

'''to measure and map . . . that mysterious mathematical lattice-work''' 
A big research area in satellite and earth sciences. For example, if you know to utmost accuracy how gravity varies in near-Earth space, you can predict the orbits of satellites used for navigation and positioning (i.e., GPS).

'''"Ray-rush"''' 
Cf contemporary telecom bandwidth auctions. "Ray-rush" as "Gold-rush"

==Page 122==

'''transfiguration unceasing''' 
Not just continuous change, but specifically changes in the observer's face as the colors and intensities shift.

'''iceblink''' 
Lightening of the underside of clouds over ice. A related phenomenon is "water sky," darkening of clouds over water. [http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/basics/phenomena/water_sky.html Photos of both.]

'''souls bound to the planetary lines of force, swept pole to pole''' 
In ''V,'' Mondaugen was stationed in South Africa to record "sferics" or "whistlers," a form of radio interference due to charged particles traveling along Earth's lines of magnetic force. Here, the planet being hollow, the field may be continuous, north-south on the outside and then south-north on the inside, and the lines may represent some other, nonmagnetic field.

'''dazzle-painting''' 
A camouflage painting technique used on WWI ships.[http://www.gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html].

'''intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska''' 
Perhaps a reference to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) site in Gakonka, AK, which is ostensibly engaged in ionospheric research [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp (Wikipedia entry)]. Also suggestive of the ECHELON network [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON (Wikipedia entry)], comprising a number of signals intelligence sites, which are capable of intercepting a wide variety of communications signals throughout the world. Also, Pynchon often creates humorous or fanciful acronyms: W.A.S.T.E. (''The Crying of Lot 49''), A.C.H.T.U.N.G. (''Gravity's Rainbow''), etc.

'''Lloyd's of the high spectrum [...] the next fateful Lutine announcement.''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutine HMS Lutine] (Lutine translates as "the tease") was a ship commissioned in the French Royal Navy which was later given to the English Royal Navy during the Revolution. In 1799 she sank in the North Sea while blockading Holland; her hold was full of gold. Lloyd's of London, an independent insurance market still known for being willing to assume large insurance risks for the right price, had insured the gold, and paid the claim in full, acquiring nominal ownership of the still-unsalvaged cargo. The ship's bell was recovered in the mid-19th century and hangs to this day in the Underwriting Room at Lloyd's. For many years the the Lutine Bell was struck to announce news of an overdue ship: once if lost, twice if reported safe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_of_London#Miscellaneous [Wikipedia]]

'''last eclipse''' 
Possibly Pike's Peak, 1878? [http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhistory/SEhistory.html (partial table)]

==Page 123==

'''lookout telegraph''' 
Instead of attaching Pugnax's tail directly to a hammer that hits the gong, the gong is struck remotely via a telegraph line.

'''Igor Padzhitnoff''' 
The whole passage that introduces the rival airship captain is a play on Tetris. Igor's surname is similar to that of the creator of Tetris, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Pazhitnov Alexey Pazhitnov]. Also, the captain himself serves "a program of mischief", flies a ship called "The Great Game" and drops "bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his "signature," to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors."

The term 'Great Game' also refers to the intense geopolitical rivalry between the English and Russian empires over control of Central Asia during the whole of the 19th century [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia]. The period of this Great Game is thought to have ended in 1907, about the time of the book. The constant appearance of the Russians wherever the Chums go would appear to play on both this and on the coming Cold War conflict. The equation of all of these with Tetris suggests a common theme in all three 'non-violent' conflicts.

'''''Ice Pirates''''' 
This turn of phrase echoes the spoof [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ movie] of camraderie and dangerous "space herpes" that was released in 1984. There's no textual evidence that Pynchon means to refer to the movie, but the satirical humor and outlandish situations presented in the film might be attractive to someone with his sensibilities.

'''Tovarishchi Slutchainyi''' 
Tovarishchi translates as comrades; the literal translation of "Slutchainyi" is "accidental", leading to one possible reading of the phrase being: Chums of Chance. 
The phrase "Tovarishchi Slutchainyi" could also mean someone who is friends, but not intentionally, ie: perhaps people who are conscripted into a situation where they are forced to be communal. (Thanks to Anna Zaytseva for the idiomatic help!) 
A third reading is introduced when the homophonic correspondence between the final two syllables of Slutchainyi and Vice-President Cheney's name is noted. (Erhm, this doesn't work: the Russian word is sloo-CHIE-nee.)
:If the name were ''Tovarishchi Sluchainogo'' instead of as in the text, it would mean "Comrades of the Random," an exact parallel to the Chums.

'''trespassing upon their "sky-space" again''' 
A Soviet and Russian preoccupation, encroachment on their airspace by military or civilian flights.

'''nasal dislocation''' 
'Nose out of joint' = offended, feelings hurt.

==Page 124==

'''Na sobrat' ya po nebo!''' 
Randolph says "На собратья по небо." What I believe he means to say is
"Наши собратья по небу" or Nashi sobrat'ya po nebu, meaning "Our brothers/comrades of the sky"—perhaps a ritual greeting between the two groups. 
If aeronauts are like pilots, and they are--see ATD early---they feel and state a solidarity with others who fly. 
It is unlikely that Pynchon would make a mistake (the Russian in GR is correct) but Randolph might err. 
''Much'' of the Russian in ''GR'' is OK, not all, and somebody erred on page 123 when they made ''sluchainyi'' (singular) modify ''tovarishchi'' (plural).

==Page 125==
'''a ''roman-feuilleton'' by M. Eugène Sue''' 
A ''roman-feuilleton'' or serial novel. Eugène Sue (the "M." is for Monsieur = Mr.) was a French novelist roughly contemporary to Dumas père, with whom he has been compared. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Sue Wikipedia entry on Eugène Sue] Sue's most famous, which used to be a Modern Library title, is ''The Wandering Jew.''

'''red as a cursed ruby representing a third eye in the brow of some idol of the incomprehensible''' 
Seems too random to not be a reference to something...Very possibly; under the name T.Lopsang Rampa an Englishman published a thoroughly discredited spiritual autobiography called The Third Eye. The Third Eye, by Englishman Cyril Hoskin, a fantastic (and popular) tale of Tibetan spirit possession published in 1956; included telepathy and more.

In the 1940 version of "The Thief of Bagdad" the boy thief Abu (played by Sabu) must steal a magical "all-seeing eye" (ruby?) from the brow of a massive golden idol in a remote temple, in order to see - as in a crystal ball - the location of the Princess held in thrall by the evil vizier Jaffar.

'''Isafjörðr''' 
Town in the Westfjords of Iceland. Often spelled as Isafjörður, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ísafjörður Wikipedia]

'''The "extra man" of Arctic myth''' 

In his footnotes to "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot glosses the lines:

''Who is the third who walks always beside you?'' 
''When I count, there are only you and I together'' 
''But when I look ahead up the white road'' 
''There is always another one walking beside you'' 

with:

"The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted." [http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/wasteland/thunder.html]

See also [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackletonexped/dispatches/19991110.html NOVA Online: Shackleton's Antarctic Odyssey]
"Shackleton, for his part, attributed their astonishing success to something else: 'I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.' Worsley and Crean, uncannily, felt the same. When T. S. Eliot read Shackleton's account, he was inspired to write the passage at the head of this dispatch."

'''the true face''' 
Possible variant on Taoism's "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao" [http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/the-X-that-can-be-Y-is-not-the-true-X.html [cf]]

'''bonzoline''' 
Ivory substitute made from celluloid, used for billiard balls. [http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=bonzoline [cite]]

==Page 126==
'''inukshuk''' 
An inukshuk is a stone landmark used as a milestone or directional marker by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Circle, dominated by permafrost, has few natural landmarks and thus the inuksuk was central to navigation across the barren tundra. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk Wikipedia entry on Inukshuk]

'''a truth beyond the secular''' 
Pynchon's use of the word "secular" is unusual. He previously had the Chums striving "to minimize contamination of the secular" on [[ATD_97-118#Page_113|page 113]], and here the Chums try to glimpse "some expression of a truth beyond the secular." Neither of these statements makes much sense with the normal definitions in use today for "secular"-- what could this mean?
: I think it is likely that secular means quotidian, "of the day", visible, as opposed to the invisible and mysterious which pervades ATD.
:Yes, that is a good extension of the original meaning: of the ages, of an age—as opposed to "eternal."

'''Étienne-Louis Malus''' 
See [[ATD_97-118#Page_114|page 114]].

'''376 feet, 6 inches''' 
The same length as the WWII-era [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_class_destroyer Fletcher Class Destroyer].

'''They passed around rumors--the Captain was insane again, ice-pirates were hunting the ''Malus'' like whalers...''' 
This phrase seems evocative of ''Moby Dick'', not only in the intimation that the Captain might be insane and the rumors that might result, but also with the explicit references to "whalers" in the subsequent clause, "the subtle insanity of Ahab." ''Moby Dick'' of course contains many scenes when two whaling ships come together to exchange messages. Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," features particularly sinister omens. It is safe to say, however, that none of the captains who meets Ahab quite resembles Padzhitnoff or has a "signature" resembling the game of Tetris! Pynchon once again lightly tweaks the "line" linking his body of work to Melville's. ([[ATD_57-80#Page_73|page 73]])

==Page 127==

'''Constance Penhallow''' 
Hallow: to set apart as holy, to honor greatly. Her name then pairs the virtue of constancy with honoring the pen. Note also that her grandson, mentioned a few lines below, is named Hunter and is an artist--In the hunt for the consecrated pen.

Alternatively, the prefix ''pen-'' is Gaelic for ''head, principal,'' or ''chief,'' in which case the name would mean "Holiest." It is also Latin for ''nearly, almost'' (as in "penultimate" or "peninsula"), rendering the name "nearly holy." Given the Nordic origin of the Penhallow family, and the Germanic etymology of "hallow," the Gaelic prefix may be more likely. On the other hand, the Latinate prefix suggests the state of preterition -- not quite holy and perhaps not saved...

I don't see "Nordic" (although their fortune is derived from Nordic commerce). The prefix ''Pen-'' in a surname marks the family as Cornish in origin.

'''walled garden''' 
In the Christian iconographic traditions of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, a walled garden, or ''hortus conclusus'' signified both/either the Garden of Eden and/or Mary's virginity.

'''Harald the Ruthless''' 
Harald III Sigurdsson (1015 – September 25, 1066), later surnamed Harald Hardråde (meaning ruthless) was the king of Norway from 1047 until 1066. Harald was the last great Viking king of Norway and his invasion of England and death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 proved a true watershed moment. It marked the end of the Viking age. In Norway, Harald's death also marked the beginning of the Christian era. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_III_of_Norway Wikipedia entry on Harald the Ruthless]

'''Ginnungagap''' 
In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness" or "gaping gap") was a vast chasm that existed before the ordering of the world. To the north of Ginnungagap lay the intense cold of Niflheim, to the south the insufferable heat of Muspelheim. At the beginning of time, the two met in the Ginnungagap; and where the heat met the frost, the frost drops melted and formed the substance eitr, which quickened into life in the form of the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnungagap Wikipedia entry on Ginnungagap]

==Page 128==

'''Bay of Röerford''' 
Does not seem to exist, at least with this spelling.

'''Hunter Penhallow''' 
See above, Constance Penhallow.

'''lower-eighties''' 
Latitudes from 80N to 85N (mainly Ellesmere Island). [http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm [map]]

'''love''' 
The word is rare in Pynchon's work. Here it is linked to separation, the human theme of the novel.

==Page 129==

'''Meat Olaf''' 
Anagram.
:As a lesson on the dangers of over-interpretation: I asked a Norwegian friend whether this is truly a Norwegian dish, to which he replied "no," making me feel stupid. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

'''''¡Cuidado Cabrón! Salsa Explosiva La Original''''' 
Cabrón is an offensive word in Spanish meaning a guy who is an asshole/dick/cuckold, but friends can also call each other Cabrón in a joking manner. So, ''Watch-Out, Fucker! The Original Explosive Sauce''.
:There appears, in "''Explosiva La Original''," to be a suggestion of an originary explosion, i.e. the Big Bang.

==Page 130==

'''Tsangpo-Brahmaputra country''' 
The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.

'''Candlebrow University''' 
A fictional institute, created in the tradition of Lovecraft's Miskatonic University.

'''Quaternions''' 
In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry].

'''Fleetwood Vibe''' 
Fleetwood, like Scarsdale, is a wealthy suburb of New York City. Both communities are located in Westchester County, north of New York City.

'''bucket-shop''' 
Business designed to cheat people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop [Wikipedia]]

'''Flannelette''' 
Little washcloth. 
Flannelette is a soft fabric popular (in the UK at least) for pyjamas of a cosy but unsexy kind --[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 10:40, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Harriman... Schiff''' 
Railroad magnate and financier behind Northern Pacific Railroad, c1901. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Pacific_Railroad [Wikipedia]] [http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/eh_harriman.html Book on Harriman] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman Harriman Wikpedia Entry] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff Schiff Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 131==

'''"with oceangoing ships we left flat surfaces and went into Riemann space"''' 
One of Riemann's major contributions was the mathematics of manifolds, geometrical constructs that on a local scale appear to have fewer dimensions than they actually occupy. A standard example is the surface of the earth, which locally appears to be flat (2-dimensional), but in fact is curved (3-dimensional). Riemann's differential geometry quantifies the distortion produced by the curve of the surface.

'''Outer Hebrides''' 
or Western Isles comprise an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The population today is only 26,370, and there is no University.

==Page 132==

'''an ''additional axis'' whose unit is (-1)¹/²''' 
The usual form of representing a complex number ''z = b + ai'', (see below for explanation) graphically is by presenting its real part, ''b'', along the horizontal real axis and its imaginary part, ''a'', on the vertical imaginary (''additional'') axis of a Cartesian coordinate system. For a graph illustion of [http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jgraham/hypo/h13/images/image118.gif z = 1 + 2i].

'''complex number''' 
The complex number is of the form ''b + ai'', where ''a'' and ''b'' are real numbers and ''i'' is defined as the square root of -1, i.e. ''i'' = (-1)¹/². According to the definition, Cf page 133 Imaginary Number, ''ai'' is an imaginary number. Therefore, a complex number is a sum of real and imaginary numbers. Commonly, one use ''z'' to denote the whole expression ''b + ai'', i.e. ''z = b + ai''. And now ''z'' is called a complex number. Besides ''z'', the letter ''w'' is often used to denote complex numbers.

'''complex variable''' 
In mathematics, a 'variable' is a symbolic representation, usually a letter of the English (such as x and y), Greek or Roman alphabet, denoting an 'unkown' quantity which may vary during the course of calculation or investigation. For example, the speed of a jetliner,''v'', flying from Los Angeles to New York varies during the course of its flight. So,''v'' here is a variable. While 'c', the speed of light, unvaried, is a constant. In the algebraic equation y = ax² + bx + c where a, b and c are constants, x and y are ''variables''. When x and y involve complex numbers, then they are called complex variables.

'''''w = exp z''''' 
Here, ''w'' is a complex function, or a function of complex variables. ''exp z'' is the exponential function of ''z'' to the base ''e''. The expression ''w = exp z'' gives the relationship of the independent (complex) variable ''z'' to the dependent (complex) variable ''w'', i.e. mapping ''z'' onto ''w''. This relationship may not be one-to-one. The number ''e'' is the base of the natural logarithm, approximately equals to 2.71828. After ''Pi'', ''e'' is the most important
constant in mathematics. See the popular article about the history, definition and 10,000-place value of [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/e.html ''e''].

'''as Fitzgerald maintained, a shrinkage of dimension''' 
Irish physicist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_FitzGerald George FitzGerald] proposed a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction contraction of length] parallel to the direction of motion, to explain the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Quantitavely, the contraction is identical with the one predicted later by Einstein's special theory of relativity.

[http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/p200/str/str.html Here] is a concise and satisfying discussion of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century physics.

==Page 133==

'''Ynglingasaga''' 
See also Ynglinga Saga, or the story of the ancient Norse kings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ynglinga_saga Wikipedia entry]

'''''The Book of Iceland Spar''''', '''commonly described as "like the ''Ynglingasaga'' only different"''' 
" 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170)

'''... even of days not yet transpired.''' 
Reminiscent of the Borges short story "The Library of Babel" about an "infinite library" which contains every possible book. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_babel Wikipedia entry].

'''Imaginary Number''' 
Imaginary number is of the form ''ai'', where ''a'' is a real number, and ''i'' is defined such that ''i² = -1'', 
i.e. i = (-1)¹/² (sqare root of minus 1). For example, ''-16¹/²'', (square root of minus 16) is an imaginary number since it can be expressed as ''4i'' by definition. In the novel ''The Da Vinci Code'' (2003), the character Robert Langdon jokes that character Sophie Neveu "believes in the imaginary number ''i'' because it helps her break code". In Issac Asimov's short story ''The Imaginary'' (1942), eccentric psychologist Tan Porus explains the behavior of a mysterious species of squid by using imaginary numbers in the equations which describe its psychology.

==Page 134==

'''that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen''' 
Seems to echo Merle Rideout's theory on the "double refraction" of Blinky Morgan and Ed Morley from p.62. 
It's also a reference to the discussion of complex numbers in the previous pages, the implication being that the double refraction due to the Iceland Spar ("ninety-degree twist") puts the "Hidden People" into an imaginary space analogous to the imaginary axis of the space of complex numbers--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 12:55, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect''' 
Extraterrestrials, perhaps? "Visitors", in popular culture, is a term sometimes used to describe ETs. The alien race from the television miniseries ''V'' was named The Visitors. In the fictional world of ''South Park'', aliens are referred to as "visitors".

'''infinitesimal circle''' 
Cf p58. Reference to epsilon neighbourhoods, an essential tool in mathematical proofs.

'''bad ice''' 
Uneven ice formed by pressure, currents and wind in the dynamic Arctic environment

'''neutral-density gray''' 
Photography term. A neutral-density filter is designed to reduce the amount of light entering the lens without introducing a colour cast.

'''the sea-green, the ice-green, glass-green sea.''' 
In ''Ulysses'', James Joyce repeatedly describes the "snotgreen sea" (cf. Gabler edition, p. 4), itself an allusion to Homer's evocation of the "wine-dark sea". Cf., also, ATD, p.127: " . . . a green headland, sheer green walls of ice, the greenness nearest the water . . . . " In previous novels, Pynchon's use of color is almost always advised, as N.K. Hayles and M.B. Eiser note in their essay, "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow," in which green is frequently associated with the natural world, uncontaminated by humanity.

'''Narvik''' 
is a town in Norway, above the Arctic Circle.

==Page 135==

'''Mush-It-Away''' 
Takeaway (takeout fast food) for dogsledders.

==Page 136==

'''Venice of the Arctic''' 
Many cities have been compared with Venice in Italy, usually due to a high density of waterways (especially inner city canals) and/or maritime trade connections. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_nicknames#.27Venice_of_....27 Wikipedia entry on Venice of the X comparisons]

The Venice passage contains two themes that have appeared often in ''Against the Day'' so far: that of doubles (such as Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe, Randolph and his Russian counterpart, etc) and that of chance or randomness (the Chums, the meeting of Vibe and Walker, etc).

Also the double versions of the map of Asia, double versions of elements that can be seen when they are viewed with Iceland Spar.

And Pynchon seems to love Venice, a very positive place in one short story

'''Bauer-Grünewald''' 
Famous hotel in Venice.

'''kedgework''' 
A set of pilings used to move a ship by hauling on its mooring or anchoring lines.

==Page 138==

In the period of ATD, museums around the world sought spectacular meteorites, e.g. the Cape York meteorite recovered by Arctic explorer Robert Peary.
[http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/what/capeyork.php]

'''Nesselrode pudding''' 
From ''The Penguin Book of Food and Drink'', ed. Paul Levy: 
"An iced pudding flavoured with chestnuts and dried fruit was invented by Monsieur Mony, chef for many years to the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, in Paris [...] Glacé fruit and peel were a further embellishment to the Nesselrode by the time Proust was old enough to notice such things.

==Page 139==
'''Dr. Counterfly... bearded''' 
Last seen as a boy with low rank. Six years have elapsed, 1893-1899.

'''lenses proved to be...Nicol prisms''' 
A Nicol Prism is a device to produce polarized light. It is made from a crystal of calcite (Iceland spar), which is cut along a precisely determined plane and then cemented back together with Canada balsam. A picture can be found [http://web.grinnell.edu/physics/PMuseum/Nicol%20Prisms.html here], detailed diagrams of Nicol and other polarizing prisms are availabe [http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/polpri.html here].

:Glasses like the ones described here are used for viewing 3-D movies.

'''''nunatak''''' 
A nunatak (plural: nunataks) is a mountain top that is not covered by land ice (see glaciation and ice age), and protrudes out of a surrounding glacier. The wildlife on a nunatak can be isolated by the glacier, just like an island is in the ocean. Nunataks are generally angular and jagged because of freeze-thaw weathering, and can be seen to contrast strongly with the softer contours of the glacially eroded land below if the glacier retreats. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunatak [Wikipedia]]

==Page 140==

'''a large brass speaking-trumpet''' 
Somewhat reminiscent of the ubiquitous W.A.S.T.E. symbolism in ''The Crying of Lot 49''.

[[image:Breguethands.jpg|thumb|Breguet hands|right]]'''Breguet-style arrowheads''' 
A distinctive fine watch of French design, usually with open circles ('moons') near the ends of the hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breguet_(watch) Wikipedia entry]

'''Poulsen's Telegraphone''' 
Invented in 1898, the first magnetic recording machine was patented by Valdemar Poulsen. The theory behind this machine was worked out theoretically by Oberlin Smith of the UK in 1888. Poulsen's machine recorded by passing a thin wire across an electromagnet. Each minute section of the wire would retain its electromagnetic charge, thus recording the sound. Sound could be both recorded and played back. Unfortunately, because the machine's output wasn't very loud and there was no way to amplify the signal, the Telegraphone was not much of a success. [http://www.wou.edu/las/creativearts/music/MUS%20206%20Text.pdf External link]

'''a human caul''' 
caul (Latin: Caput galeatum, literally, "head helmet") is a thin, filmy membrane, the remnants of the amniotic sac, that covers or partly covers the newborn mammal immediately after birth. It is also the membrane enclosing the paunch of mammals, particularly as in pork and mutton butchery. In butchery, the caul is used as offal. A third meaning refers to a type of women's headdress. The superstition attached to birth cauls has figured into numerous works of fiction, including ''David Copperfield,'' Stephen King's ''The Shining'' (wherein the child Danny Torrance, born with a caul, is possessed with the eponymous supernatural power), and Alan Moore's short graphic novel, ''The Birth Caul''.

==Page 141==

'''''camera lucida''''' 
A drawing aid sometimes used with an optical instrument; it is worthwhile to read the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida Wikipedia entry] in order to understand what's going on here.

'''misfortunes of certain Egyptologists''' 
Possibly a reference to the curse supposed to be attendant on the tomb of Tutankhamen, and upon which the death of George Herbert, who financed the expedition, was blamed. The tomb was breached in Feb 1923, though, and that seems later than this episode, so it may just be a reference to general myth. [http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/curse.htm [history]]

'''odalisque of the snows''' 
An odalisque was a virgin female slave who tended to the harem of the Turkish sultan. Numerous paintings of the 19th century portrayed them as reclining beauties. The most famous of these is Ingres' ''La grande odalisque'' (1814):

[[Image:odalisque.jpg|300px|center]]

'''mongoloid features''' 
Perhaps a reference to images of the Buddha, in which he is often seen reclining?

===Page 142===

'''we intrepid innocents . . . destiny."
This Vormance expedition calls to mind the 2004 film [http://imdb.com/title/tt0370263/ AVP: Alien Vs. Predator], in which an exploratory expedition funded by nefarious corporate elements discovers an ancient polar pyramid which they descend into, getting more than they bargain for in the process. Good stupid camp.

==Page 143==

'''Tungus''' 
Siberian language. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungusic_languages [Wikipedia]]

'''bilocation''' 
Doubtless to be an important concept in the novel, judging by the title of Part Three. Latin bis, twice, and locatio, place. Bilocation is as Pynchon explains, the ostensibly supernatural act of appearing or being in two or more locations simultaneously. Bilocation is claimed to have been experienced, and even practiced at will, by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, and magical adepts. Notably, Icelandic sagas also speak of warriors who were able to fall into a trance and appear thousands of miles away in battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation Wikipedia on bilocation] Is also obviously related to the physical properties of Iceland Spar.

'''Christian Time''' 
That is, linear time, a concept first introduced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo St. Augustine of Hippo] (354-430), in his autobiographical [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions/confessions.html ''Confessions'']. Augustine argued that the inevitability and singularity of Christ's return demanded that all history must be viewed as a linear progression toward the apocalypse and the ascendancy of Christ on Earth, after which time would effectively stop, an event described as the "End of Days." From this decidedly deterministic view of time, Augustine derived his doctrine of predestination, that is, of a world in which each soul, even as it is born, is already pre-defined as saved or unsaved. While the Catholic Church would eventually reject this doctrine, the protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin resurrected it, and it became an important part of Calvinist theology, notably as practiced by the Puritans.

==Page 144==

'''"we measured, and remeasured, and each time the dimensions kept coming out different - not just slightly so but drastically."''' 
Cf. Mark Danielewski's debut novel ''House Of Leaves'' (2000), where a house interior dimensions keep changing, while the exterior remains unaltered. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_leaves Wikipedia entry]

'''"its gaze had remained directed solely, personally, to each of us, no matter where we stood or moved."''' 
Supposedly a standard feature of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church portrait-icons.

'''Returned to harbor at last''' 
Not in Iceland but in the city from where the expedition first sailed.

==Page 145==

'''upstate security of Matteawan''' 
I.e., committed to the Matteawan Asylum at Fishkill, N.Y. Does this leave any doubt as to the name of the great city?

[[image:Evangelion.jpg|right|175px|thumb|The apocalyptic giant of light unearthed in the Arctic in Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'''the man-shaped light shall not deliver you''' 
Reminiscent of the famous Japanese anime ''Neon Genesis Evangelion'' (1994-95), in which mankind unearths a mysterious creature from the Arctic ice that appears as a man-shaped giant of light, gets out of man's control and triggers an apocalypse. Probably not an intentional reference, but if Pynchon plays Tetris, who knows? 
:-sinister variant of GR's Kirghiz Light? Those who see the Light find their words dismissed "as the meaningless sounds of a baby" (GR 358) just as witnesses to ATD's light are sent to the sanitorium. Note also the line's similarity to the Aqyn's warning from GR: "And the Light will never find you." (359)

c.f. the man-shaped light on 153

==Page 146==

'''lines''' 
The description of the single-file line at the train station basically describes current security conditions at American airports.
A single line (i.e. linear thinking) does not seem to be a 'positive' in the Pynchon world. (See too the slaughterhouse on page 10.)

'''Explorers' Club''' 
Apparently in South Africa (the famous NYC one wasn't founded until 1904).
:In Washington, D.C., though this doesn't help with the timing since the D.C. chapter wasn't formed till 1924. But "in Africa," "out there" and the word "British" in referring to the poet laureate—these all rule out Africa as the site.

'''Dr. Jim's little adventure''' 
A reference to the so-called "Jameson Raid" spearheaded by Dr. L. S. Jameson. The raid was intended to trigger an uprising among the British expatriate workers (the Uitlanders) in the Transvaal, but failed, and instead served to further destabilize the region and catalyze the Second Boer War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid Wikipedia entry] (From Wikipedia: “The Jameson Raid (December 29, 1895 - January 2, 1896) was a raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895-96. It was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so. The raid was ineffective and no uprising took place, but it did much to bring about the Second Boer War and the Second Matabele War.”)

'''"War any moment"''' 
The Second Boer War started in October 1899. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War [Wikipedia]]

'''the British poet-laureate’s commemorative verse''' 
Reference to Alfred Austin. From Wikipedia: “As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Austin Wikipedia entry]

The questionable rhyme referred to is from that “hasty poem” --

::They went across the veldt,
::As hard as they could pelt.

==Page 147==

'''Borchardt''' 
[[image:borchardt.jpg|thumb|200px|Borchardt pistol|right]]1894 forerunner of Luger.

'''Nansen''' 
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (1861-1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat. Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner. In 1893, he sailed to the Arctic in a ship which was deliberately allowed to drift north through the sea ice, a journey that took more than three years. During this first crossing of the Arctic Ocean the expedition became the first to discover the existence of a deep polar basin. When, after more than one year in the ice it became apparent that the ship would not reach the North Pole, Nansen continued north on foot and, in April 1895, reached 86° 14´ N, the highest latitude then attained. The two men were forced to spend the winter, surviving on walrus blubber and polar bear meat. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen Wikipedia entry on Nansen] Cf. p. 138.

'''Suppose it were to happen to us . . . an innocence they knew how to circumvent''' 
"Art" is supposed, among other things, to help us interpret our world. This passage is Art as brilliant and hardnosed as anything Goya or Picasso or Shostakovich ever created. Just one man's opinion. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:19, 5 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 148==

'''"Evolution. Ape evolves to man, well, what's the next step - human to what? Some ''compound organism'', the American Corporation, for instance"''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from William Gibson's 1981 short story "New Rose Hotel":

:Imagine an alien, Fox once said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has a look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.
:The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.

'''the American Corporation, for instance, in which even the Supreme Court has recognized legal personhood ''' 
Refers to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), during which Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad Wikipedia entry] Corporations are routinely recognized as "persons" in the law nowadays. For more on the recognition of corporation as legal persons, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Wikipedia entry on corporate personhood]. A recent documentary film, ''The Corporation'' (2003), tried to make the case that if a corporation is a "person," it has the personality of a psychopath.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 119-148

2007-02-11T20:55:44Z

Gobbag: /* Page 134 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 121==

'''flying bridge''' 
On an ordinary aquatic ship, the flying bridge is an open deck atop the pilothouse for navigating in good weather. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_bridge [Wikipedia]]

'''to measure and map . . . that mysterious mathematical lattice-work''' 
A big research area in satellite and earth sciences. For example, if you know to utmost accuracy how gravity varies in near-Earth space, you can predict the orbits of satellites used for navigation and positioning (i.e., GPS).

'''"Ray-rush"''' 
Cf contemporary telecom bandwidth auctions. "Ray-rush" as "Gold-rush"

==Page 122==

'''transfiguration unceasing''' 
Not just continuous change, but specifically changes in the observer's face as the colors and intensities shift.

'''iceblink''' 
Lightening of the underside of clouds over ice. A related phenomenon is "water sky," darkening of clouds over water. [http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/basics/phenomena/water_sky.html Photos of both.]

'''souls bound to the planetary lines of force, swept pole to pole''' 
In ''V,'' Mondaugen was stationed in South Africa to record "sferics" or "whistlers," a form of radio interference due to charged particles traveling along Earth's lines of magnetic force. Here, the planet being hollow, the field may be continuous, north-south on the outside and then south-north on the inside, and the lines may represent some other, nonmagnetic field.

'''dazzle-painting''' 
A camouflage painting technique used on WWI ships.[http://www.gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html].

'''intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska''' 
Perhaps a reference to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) site in Gakonka, AK, which is ostensibly engaged in ionospheric research [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp (Wikipedia entry)]. Also suggestive of the ECHELON network [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON (Wikipedia entry)], comprising a number of signals intelligence sites, which are capable of intercepting a wide variety of communications signals throughout the world. Also, Pynchon often creates humorous or fanciful acronyms: W.A.S.T.E. (''The Crying of Lot 49''), A.C.H.T.U.N.G. (''Gravity's Rainbow''), etc.

'''Lloyd's of the high spectrum [...] the next fateful Lutine announcement.''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutine HMS Lutine] (Lutine translates as "the tease") was a ship commissioned in the French Royal Navy which was later given to the English Royal Navy during the Revolution. In 1799 she sank in the North Sea while blockading Holland; her hold was full of gold. Lloyd's of London, an independent insurance market still known for being willing to assume large insurance risks for the right price, had insured the gold, and paid the claim in full, acquiring nominal ownership of the still-unsalvaged cargo. The ship's bell was recovered in the mid-19th century and hangs to this day in the Underwriting Room at Lloyd's. For many years the the Lutine Bell was struck to announce news of an overdue ship: once if lost, twice if reported safe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_of_London#Miscellaneous [Wikipedia]]

'''last eclipse''' 
Possibly Pike's Peak, 1878? [http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhistory/SEhistory.html (partial table)]

==Page 123==

'''lookout telegraph''' 
Instead of attaching Pugnax's tail directly to a hammer that hits the gong, the gong is struck remotely via a telegraph line.

'''Igor Padzhitnoff''' 
The whole passage that introduces the rival airship captain is a play on Tetris. Igor's surname is similar to that of the creator of Tetris, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Pazhitnov Alexey Pazhitnov]. Also, the captain himself serves "a program of mischief", flies a ship called "The Great Game" and drops "bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his "signature," to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors."

The term 'Great Game' also refers to the intense geopolitical rivalry between the English and Russian empires over control of Central Asia during the whole of the 19th century [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia]. The period of this Great Game is thought to have ended in 1907, about the time of the book. The constant appearance of the Russians wherever the Chums go would appear to play on both this and on the coming Cold War conflict. The equation of all of these with Tetris suggests a common theme in all three 'non-violent' conflicts.

'''''Ice Pirates''''' 
This turn of phrase echoes the spoof [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ movie] of camraderie and dangerous "space herpes" that was released in 1984. There's no textual evidence that Pynchon means to refer to the movie, but the satirical humor and outlandish situations presented in the film might be attractive to someone with his sensibilities.

'''Tovarishchi Slutchainyi''' 
Tovarishchi translates as comrades; the literal translation of "Slutchainyi" is "accidental", leading to one possible reading of the phrase being: Chums of Chance. 
The phrase "Tovarishchi Slutchainyi" could also mean someone who is friends, but not intentionally, ie: perhaps people who are conscripted into a situation where they are forced to be communal. (Thanks to Anna Zaytseva for the idiomatic help!) 
A third reading is introduced when the homophonic correspondence between the final two syllables of Slutchainyi and Vice-President Cheney's name is noted. (Erhm, this doesn't work: the Russian word is sloo-CHIE-nee.)
:If the name were ''Tovarishchi Sluchainogo'' instead of as in the text, it would mean "Comrades of the Random," an exact parallel to the Chums.

'''trespassing upon their "sky-space" again''' 
A Soviet and Russian preoccupation, encroachment on their airspace by military or civilian flights.

'''nasal dislocation''' 
'Nose out of joint' = offended, feelings hurt.

==Page 124==

'''Na sobrat' ya po nebo!''' 
Randolph says "На собратья по небо." What I believe he means to say is
"Наши собратья по небу" or Nashi sobrat'ya po nebu, meaning "Our brothers/comrades of the sky"—perhaps a ritual greeting between the two groups. 
If aeronauts are like pilots, and they are--see ATD early---they feel and state a solidarity with others who fly. 
It is unlikely that Pynchon would make a mistake (the Russian in GR is correct) but Randolph might err. 
''Much'' of the Russian in ''GR'' is OK, not all, and somebody erred on page 123 when they made ''sluchainyi'' (singular) modify ''tovarishchi'' (plural).

==Page 125==
'''a ''roman-feuilleton'' by M. Eugène Sue''' 
A ''roman-feuilleton'' or serial novel. Eugène Sue (the "M." is for Monsieur = Mr.) was a French novelist roughly contemporary to Dumas père, with whom he has been compared. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Sue Wikipedia entry on Eugène Sue] Sue's most famous, which used to be a Modern Library title, is ''The Wandering Jew.''

'''red as a cursed ruby representing a third eye in the brow of some idol of the incomprehensible''' 
Seems too random to not be a reference to something...Very possibly; under the name T.Lopsang Rampa an Englishman published a thoroughly discredited spiritual autobiography called The Third Eye. The Third Eye, by Englishman Cyril Hoskin, a fantastic (and popular) tale of Tibetan spirit possession published in 1956; included telepathy and more.

In the 1940 version of "The Thief of Bagdad" the boy thief Abu (played by Sabu) must steal a magical "all-seeing eye" (ruby?) from the brow of a massive golden idol in a remote temple, in order to see - as in a crystal ball - the location of the Princess held in thrall by the evil vizier Jaffar.

'''Isafjörðr''' 
Town in the Westfjords of Iceland. Often spelled as Isafjörður, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ísafjörður Wikipedia]

'''The "extra man" of Arctic myth''' 

In his footnotes to "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot glosses the lines:

''Who is the third who walks always beside you?'' 
''When I count, there are only you and I together'' 
''But when I look ahead up the white road'' 
''There is always another one walking beside you'' 

with:

"The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted." [http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/wasteland/thunder.html]

See also [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackletonexped/dispatches/19991110.html NOVA Online: Shackleton's Antarctic Odyssey]
"Shackleton, for his part, attributed their astonishing success to something else: 'I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.' Worsley and Crean, uncannily, felt the same. When T. S. Eliot read Shackleton's account, he was inspired to write the passage at the head of this dispatch."

'''the true face''' 
Possible variant on Taoism's "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao" [http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/the-X-that-can-be-Y-is-not-the-true-X.html [cf]]

'''bonzoline''' 
Ivory substitute made from celluloid, used for billiard balls. [http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=bonzoline [cite]]

==Page 126==
'''inukshuk''' 
An inukshuk is a stone landmark used as a milestone or directional marker by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Circle, dominated by permafrost, has few natural landmarks and thus the inuksuk was central to navigation across the barren tundra. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk Wikipedia entry on Inukshuk]

'''a truth beyond the secular''' 
Pynchon's use of the word "secular" is unusual. He previously had the Chums striving "to minimize contamination of the secular" on [[ATD_97-118#Page_113|page 113]], and here the Chums try to glimpse "some expression of a truth beyond the secular." Neither of these statements makes much sense with the normal definitions in use today for "secular"-- what could this mean?
: I think it is likely that secular means quotidian, "of the day", visible, as opposed to the invisible and mysterious which pervades ATD.
:Yes, that is a good extension of the original meaning: of the ages, of an age—as opposed to "eternal."

'''Étienne-Louis Malus''' 
See [[ATD_97-118#Page_114|page 114]].

'''376 feet, 6 inches''' 
The same length as the WWII-era [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_class_destroyer Fletcher Class Destroyer].

'''They passed around rumors--the Captain was insane again, ice-pirates were hunting the ''Malus'' like whalers...''' 
This phrase seems evocative of ''Moby Dick'', not only in the intimation that the Captain might be insane and the rumors that might result, but also with the explicit references to "whalers" in the subsequent clause, "the subtle insanity of Ahab." ''Moby Dick'' of course contains many scenes when two whaling ships come together to exchange messages. Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," features particularly sinister omens. It is safe to say, however, that none of the captains who meets Ahab quite resembles Padzhitnoff or has a "signature" resembling the game of Tetris! Pynchon once again lightly tweaks the "line" linking his body of work to Melville's. ([[ATD_57-80#Page_73|page 73]])

==Page 127==

'''Constance Penhallow''' 
Hallow: to set apart as holy, to honor greatly. Her name then pairs the virtue of constancy with honoring the pen. Note also that her grandson, mentioned a few lines below, is named Hunter and is an artist--In the hunt for the consecrated pen.

Alternatively, the prefix ''pen-'' is Gaelic for ''head, principal,'' or ''chief,'' in which case the name would mean "Holiest." It is also Latin for ''nearly, almost'' (as in "penultimate" or "peninsula"), rendering the name "nearly holy." Given the Nordic origin of the Penhallow family, and the Germanic etymology of "hallow," the Gaelic prefix may be more likely. On the other hand, the Latinate prefix suggests the state of preterition -- not quite holy and perhaps not saved...

I don't see "Nordic" (although their fortune is derived from Nordic commerce). The prefix ''Pen-'' in a surname marks the family as Cornish in origin.

'''walled garden''' 
In the Christian iconographic traditions of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, a walled garden, or ''hortus conclusus'' signified both/either the Garden of Eden and/or Mary's virginity.

'''Harald the Ruthless''' 
Harald III Sigurdsson (1015 – September 25, 1066), later surnamed Harald Hardråde (meaning ruthless) was the king of Norway from 1047 until 1066. Harald was the last great Viking king of Norway and his invasion of England and death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 proved a true watershed moment. It marked the end of the Viking age. In Norway, Harald's death also marked the beginning of the Christian era. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_III_of_Norway Wikipedia entry on Harald the Ruthless]

'''Ginnungagap''' 
In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness" or "gaping gap") was a vast chasm that existed before the ordering of the world. To the north of Ginnungagap lay the intense cold of Niflheim, to the south the insufferable heat of Muspelheim. At the beginning of time, the two met in the Ginnungagap; and where the heat met the frost, the frost drops melted and formed the substance eitr, which quickened into life in the form of the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnungagap Wikipedia entry on Ginnungagap]

==Page 128==

'''Bay of Röerford''' 
Does not seem to exist, at least with this spelling.

'''Hunter Penhallow''' 
See above, Constance Penhallow.

'''lower-eighties''' 
Latitudes from 80N to 85N (mainly Ellesmere Island). [http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm [map]]

'''love''' 
The word is rare in Pynchon's work. Here it is linked to separation, the human theme of the novel.

==Page 129==

'''Meat Olaf''' 
Anagram.
:As a lesson on the dangers of over-interpretation: I asked a Norwegian friend whether this is truly a Norwegian dish, to which he replied "no," making me feel stupid. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

'''''¡Cuidado Cabrón! Salsa Explosiva La Original''''' 
Cabrón is an offensive word in Spanish meaning a guy who is an asshole/dick/cuckold, but friends can also call each other Cabrón in a joking manner. So, ''Watch-Out, Fucker! The Original Explosive Sauce''.
:There appears, in "''Explosiva La Original''," to be a suggestion of an originary explosion, i.e. the Big Bang.

==Page 130==

'''Tsangpo-Brahmaputra country''' 
The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.

'''Candlebrow University''' 
A fictional institute, created in the tradition of Lovecraft's Miskatonic University.

'''Quaternions''' 
In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry].

'''Fleetwood Vibe''' 
Fleetwood, like Scarsdale, is a wealthy suburb of New York City. Both communities are located in Westchester County, north of New York City.

'''bucket-shop''' 
Business designed to cheat people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop [Wikipedia]]

'''Flannelette''' 
Little washcloth. 
Flannelette is a soft fabric popular (in the UK at least) for pyjamas of a cosy but unsexy kind --[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 10:40, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Harriman... Schiff''' 
Railroad magnate and financier behind Northern Pacific Railroad, c1901. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Pacific_Railroad [Wikipedia]] [http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/eh_harriman.html Book on Harriman] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman Harriman Wikpedia Entry] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff Schiff Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 131==

'''"with oceangoing ships we left flat surfaces and went into Riemann space"''' 
One of Riemann's major contributions was the mathematics of manifolds, geometrical constructs that on a local scale appear to have fewer dimensions than they actually occupy. A standard example is the surface of the earth, which locally appears to be flat (2-dimensional), but in fact is curved (3-dimensional). Riemann's differential geometry quantifies the distortion produced by the curve of the surface.

'''Outer Hebrides''' 
or Western Isles comprise an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The population today is only 26,370, and there is no University.

==Page 132==

'''an ''additional axis'' whose unit is (-1)¹/²''' 
The usual form of representing a complex number ''z = b + ai'', (see below for explanation) graphically is by presenting its real part, ''b'', along the horizontal real axis and its imaginary part, ''a'', on the vertical imaginary (''additional'') axis of a Cartesian coordinate system. For a graph illustion of [http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jgraham/hypo/h13/images/image118.gif z = 1 + 2i].

'''complex number''' 
The complex number is of the form ''b + ai'', where ''a'' and ''b'' are real numbers and ''i'' is defined as the square root of -1, i.e. ''i'' = (-1)¹/². According to the definition, Cf page 133 Imaginary Number, ''ai'' is an imaginary number. Therefore, a complex number is a sum of real and imaginary numbers. Commonly, one use ''z'' to denote the whole expression ''b + ai'', i.e. ''z = b + ai''. And now ''z'' is called a complex number. Besides ''z'', the letter ''w'' is often used to denote complex numbers.

'''complex variable''' 
In mathematics, a 'variable' is a symbolic representation, usually a letter of the English (such as x and y), Greek or Roman alphabet, denoting an 'unkown' quantity which may vary during the course of calculation or investigation. For example, the speed of a jetliner,''v'', flying from Los Angeles to New York varies during the course of its flight. So,''v'' here is a variable. While 'c', the speed of light, unvaried, is a constant. In the algebraic equation y = ax² + bx + c where a, b and c are constants, x and y are ''variables''. When x and y involve complex numbers, then they are called complex variables.

'''''w = exp z''''' 
Here, ''w'' is a complex function, or a function of complex variables. ''exp z'' is the exponential function of ''z'' to the base ''e''. The expression ''w = exp z'' gives the relationship of the independent (complex) variable ''z'' to the dependent (complex) variable ''w'', i.e. mapping ''z'' onto ''w''. This relationship may not be one-to-one. The number ''e'' is the base of the natural logarithm, approximately equals to 2.71828. After ''Pi'', ''e'' is the most important
constant in mathematics. See the popular article about the history, definition and 10,000-place value of [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/e.html ''e''].

'''as Fitzgerald maintained, a shrinkage of dimension''' 
Irish physicist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_FitzGerald George FitzGerald] proposed a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction contraction of length] parallel to the direction of motion, to explain the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Quantitavely, the contraction is identical with the one predicted later by Einstein's special theory of relativity.

[http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/p200/str/str.html Here] is a concise and satisfying discussion of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century physics.

==Page 133==

'''Ynglingasaga''' 
See also Ynglinga Saga, or the story of the ancient Norse kings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ynglinga_saga Wikipedia entry]

'''''The Book of Iceland Spar''''', '''commonly described as "like the ''Ynglingasaga'' only different"''' 
" 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170)

'''... even of days not yet transpired.''' 
Reminiscent of the Borges short story "The Library of Babel" about an "infinite library" which contains every possible book. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_babel Wikipedia entry].

'''Imaginary Number''' 
Imaginary number is of the form ''ai'', where ''a'' is a real number, and ''i'' is defined such that ''i² = -1'', 
i.e. i = (-1)¹/² (sqare root of minus 1). For example, ''-16¹/²'', (square root of minus 16) is an imaginary number since it can be expressed as ''4i'' by definition. In the novel ''The Da Vinci Code'' (2003), the character Robert Langdon jokes that character Sophie Neveu "believes in the imaginary number ''i'' because it helps her break code". In Issac Asimov's short story ''The Imaginary'' (1942), eccentric psychologist Tan Porus explains the behavior of a mysterious species of squid by using imaginary numbers in the equations which describe its psychology.

==Page 134==

'''that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen''' 
Seems to echo Merle Rideout's theory on the "double refraction" of Blinky Morgan and Ed Morley from p.62. 
It's also a reference to the discussion of complex numbers in the previous pages, the implication being that the double refraction due to the Iceland Spar ("ninety-degree twist") puts the "Hidden People" into an imaginary space analogous to the imaginary axis of the space of complex numbers--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 12:55, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect''' 
Extraterrestrials, perhaps? "Visitors", in popular culture, is a term sometimes used to describe ETs. The alien race from the television miniseries ''V'' was named The Visitors. In the fictional world of ''South Park'', aliens are referred to as "visitors".

'''infinitesimal circle''' 
Cf p58. Reference to epsilon neighbourhoods, an essential tool in mathematical proofs.

'''bad ice''' 
Uneven ice formed by pressure, currents and wind in the dynamic Arctic environment

'''the sea-green, the ice-green, glass-green sea.''' 
In ''Ulysses'', James Joyce repeatedly describes the "snotgreen sea" (cf. Gabler edition, p. 4), itself an allusion to Homer's evocation of the "wine-dark sea". Cf., also, ATD, p.127: " . . . a green headland, sheer green walls of ice, the greenness nearest the water . . . . " In previous novels, Pynchon's use of color is almost always advised, as N.K. Hayles and M.B. Eiser note in their essay, "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow," in which green is frequently associated with the natural world, uncontaminated by humanity.

'''Narvik''' 
is a town in Norway, above the Arctic Circle.

==Page 135==

'''Mush-It-Away''' 
Takeaway (takeout fast food) for dogsledders.

==Page 136==

'''Venice of the Arctic''' 
Many cities have been compared with Venice in Italy, usually due to a high density of waterways (especially inner city canals) and/or maritime trade connections. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_nicknames#.27Venice_of_....27 Wikipedia entry on Venice of the X comparisons]

The Venice passage contains two themes that have appeared often in ''Against the Day'' so far: that of doubles (such as Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe, Randolph and his Russian counterpart, etc) and that of chance or randomness (the Chums, the meeting of Vibe and Walker, etc).

Also the double versions of the map of Asia, double versions of elements that can be seen when they are viewed with Iceland Spar.

And Pynchon seems to love Venice, a very positive place in one short story

'''Bauer-Grünewald''' 
Famous hotel in Venice.

'''kedgework''' 
A set of pilings used to move a ship by hauling on its mooring or anchoring lines.

==Page 138==

In the period of ATD, museums around the world sought spectacular meteorites, e.g. the Cape York meteorite recovered by Arctic explorer Robert Peary.
[http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/what/capeyork.php]

'''Nesselrode pudding''' 
From ''The Penguin Book of Food and Drink'', ed. Paul Levy: 
"An iced pudding flavoured with chestnuts and dried fruit was invented by Monsieur Mony, chef for many years to the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, in Paris [...] Glacé fruit and peel were a further embellishment to the Nesselrode by the time Proust was old enough to notice such things.

==Page 139==
'''Dr. Counterfly... bearded''' 
Last seen as a boy with low rank. Six years have elapsed, 1893-1899.

'''lenses proved to be...Nicol prisms''' 
A Nicol Prism is a device to produce polarized light. It is made from a crystal of calcite (Iceland spar), which is cut along a precisely determined plane and then cemented back together with Canada balsam. A picture can be found [http://web.grinnell.edu/physics/PMuseum/Nicol%20Prisms.html here], detailed diagrams of Nicol and other polarizing prisms are availabe [http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/polpri.html here].

:Glasses like the ones described here are used for viewing 3-D movies.

'''''nunatak''''' 
A nunatak (plural: nunataks) is a mountain top that is not covered by land ice (see glaciation and ice age), and protrudes out of a surrounding glacier. The wildlife on a nunatak can be isolated by the glacier, just like an island is in the ocean. Nunataks are generally angular and jagged because of freeze-thaw weathering, and can be seen to contrast strongly with the softer contours of the glacially eroded land below if the glacier retreats. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunatak [Wikipedia]]

==Page 140==

'''a large brass speaking-trumpet''' 
Somewhat reminiscent of the ubiquitous W.A.S.T.E. symbolism in ''The Crying of Lot 49''.

[[image:Breguethands.jpg|thumb|Breguet hands|right]]'''Breguet-style arrowheads''' 
A distinctive fine watch of French design, usually with open circles ('moons') near the ends of the hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breguet_(watch) Wikipedia entry]

'''Poulsen's Telegraphone''' 
Invented in 1898, the first magnetic recording machine was patented by Valdemar Poulsen. The theory behind this machine was worked out theoretically by Oberlin Smith of the UK in 1888. Poulsen's machine recorded by passing a thin wire across an electromagnet. Each minute section of the wire would retain its electromagnetic charge, thus recording the sound. Sound could be both recorded and played back. Unfortunately, because the machine's output wasn't very loud and there was no way to amplify the signal, the Telegraphone was not much of a success. [http://www.wou.edu/las/creativearts/music/MUS%20206%20Text.pdf External link]

'''a human caul''' 
caul (Latin: Caput galeatum, literally, "head helmet") is a thin, filmy membrane, the remnants of the amniotic sac, that covers or partly covers the newborn mammal immediately after birth. It is also the membrane enclosing the paunch of mammals, particularly as in pork and mutton butchery. In butchery, the caul is used as offal. A third meaning refers to a type of women's headdress. The superstition attached to birth cauls has figured into numerous works of fiction, including ''David Copperfield,'' Stephen King's ''The Shining'' (wherein the child Danny Torrance, born with a caul, is possessed with the eponymous supernatural power), and Alan Moore's short graphic novel, ''The Birth Caul''.

==Page 141==

'''''camera lucida''''' 
A drawing aid sometimes used with an optical instrument; it is worthwhile to read the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida Wikipedia entry] in order to understand what's going on here.

'''misfortunes of certain Egyptologists''' 
Possibly a reference to the curse supposed to be attendant on the tomb of Tutankhamen, and upon which the death of George Herbert, who financed the expedition, was blamed. The tomb was breached in Feb 1923, though, and that seems later than this episode, so it may just be a reference to general myth. [http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/curse.htm [history]]

'''odalisque of the snows''' 
An odalisque was a virgin female slave who tended to the harem of the Turkish sultan. Numerous paintings of the 19th century portrayed them as reclining beauties. The most famous of these is Ingres' ''La grande odalisque'' (1814):

[[Image:odalisque.jpg|300px|center]]

'''mongoloid features''' 
Perhaps a reference to images of the Buddha, in which he is often seen reclining?

===Page 142===

'''we intrepid innocents . . . destiny."
This Vormance expedition calls to mind the 2004 film [http://imdb.com/title/tt0370263/ AVP: Alien Vs. Predator], in which an exploratory expedition funded by nefarious corporate elements discovers an ancient polar pyramid which they descend into, getting more than they bargain for in the process. Good stupid camp.

==Page 143==

'''Tungus''' 
Siberian language. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungusic_languages [Wikipedia]]

'''bilocation''' 
Doubtless to be an important concept in the novel, judging by the title of Part Three. Latin bis, twice, and locatio, place. Bilocation is as Pynchon explains, the ostensibly supernatural act of appearing or being in two or more locations simultaneously. Bilocation is claimed to have been experienced, and even practiced at will, by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, and magical adepts. Notably, Icelandic sagas also speak of warriors who were able to fall into a trance and appear thousands of miles away in battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation Wikipedia on bilocation] Is also obviously related to the physical properties of Iceland Spar.

'''Christian Time''' 
That is, linear time, a concept first introduced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo St. Augustine of Hippo] (354-430), in his autobiographical [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions/confessions.html ''Confessions'']. Augustine argued that the inevitability and singularity of Christ's return demanded that all history must be viewed as a linear progression toward the apocalypse and the ascendancy of Christ on Earth, after which time would effectively stop, an event described as the "End of Days." From this decidedly deterministic view of time, Augustine derived his doctrine of predestination, that is, of a world in which each soul, even as it is born, is already pre-defined as saved or unsaved. While the Catholic Church would eventually reject this doctrine, the protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin resurrected it, and it became an important part of Calvinist theology, notably as practiced by the Puritans.

==Page 144==

'''"we measured, and remeasured, and each time the dimensions kept coming out different - not just slightly so but drastically."''' 
Cf. Mark Danielewski's debut novel ''House Of Leaves'' (2000), where a house interior dimensions keep changing, while the exterior remains unaltered. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_leaves Wikipedia entry]

'''"its gaze had remained directed solely, personally, to each of us, no matter where we stood or moved."''' 
Supposedly a standard feature of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church portrait-icons.

'''Returned to harbor at last''' 
Not in Iceland but in the city from where the expedition first sailed.

==Page 145==

'''upstate security of Matteawan''' 
I.e., committed to the Matteawan Asylum at Fishkill, N.Y. Does this leave any doubt as to the name of the great city?

[[image:Evangelion.jpg|right|175px|thumb|The apocalyptic giant of light unearthed in the Arctic in Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'''the man-shaped light shall not deliver you''' 
Reminiscent of the famous Japanese anime ''Neon Genesis Evangelion'' (1994-95), in which mankind unearths a mysterious creature from the Arctic ice that appears as a man-shaped giant of light, gets out of man's control and triggers an apocalypse. Probably not an intentional reference, but if Pynchon plays Tetris, who knows? 
:-sinister variant of GR's Kirghiz Light? Those who see the Light find their words dismissed "as the meaningless sounds of a baby" (GR 358) just as witnesses to ATD's light are sent to the sanitorium. Note also the line's similarity to the Aqyn's warning from GR: "And the Light will never find you." (359)

c.f. the man-shaped light on 153

==Page 146==

'''lines''' 
The description of the single-file line at the train station basically describes current security conditions at American airports.
A single line (i.e. linear thinking) does not seem to be a 'positive' in the Pynchon world. (See too the slaughterhouse on page 10.)

'''Explorers' Club''' 
Apparently in South Africa (the famous NYC one wasn't founded until 1904).
:In Washington, D.C., though this doesn't help with the timing since the D.C. chapter wasn't formed till 1924. But "in Africa," "out there" and the word "British" in referring to the poet laureate—these all rule out Africa as the site.

'''Dr. Jim's little adventure''' 
A reference to the so-called "Jameson Raid" spearheaded by Dr. L. S. Jameson. The raid was intended to trigger an uprising among the British expatriate workers (the Uitlanders) in the Transvaal, but failed, and instead served to further destabilize the region and catalyze the Second Boer War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid Wikipedia entry] (From Wikipedia: “The Jameson Raid (December 29, 1895 - January 2, 1896) was a raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895-96. It was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so. The raid was ineffective and no uprising took place, but it did much to bring about the Second Boer War and the Second Matabele War.”)

'''"War any moment"''' 
The Second Boer War started in October 1899. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War [Wikipedia]]

'''the British poet-laureate’s commemorative verse''' 
Reference to Alfred Austin. From Wikipedia: “As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Austin Wikipedia entry]

The questionable rhyme referred to is from that “hasty poem” --

::They went across the veldt,
::As hard as they could pelt.

==Page 147==

'''Borchardt''' 
[[image:borchardt.jpg|thumb|200px|Borchardt pistol|right]]1894 forerunner of Luger.

'''Nansen''' 
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (1861-1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat. Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner. In 1893, he sailed to the Arctic in a ship which was deliberately allowed to drift north through the sea ice, a journey that took more than three years. During this first crossing of the Arctic Ocean the expedition became the first to discover the existence of a deep polar basin. When, after more than one year in the ice it became apparent that the ship would not reach the North Pole, Nansen continued north on foot and, in April 1895, reached 86° 14´ N, the highest latitude then attained. The two men were forced to spend the winter, surviving on walrus blubber and polar bear meat. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen Wikipedia entry on Nansen] Cf. p. 138.

'''Suppose it were to happen to us . . . an innocence they knew how to circumvent''' 
"Art" is supposed, among other things, to help us interpret our world. This passage is Art as brilliant and hardnosed as anything Goya or Picasso or Shostakovich ever created. Just one man's opinion. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:19, 5 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 148==

'''"Evolution. Ape evolves to man, well, what's the next step - human to what? Some ''compound organism'', the American Corporation, for instance"''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from William Gibson's 1981 short story "New Rose Hotel":

:Imagine an alien, Fox once said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has a look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.
:The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.

'''the American Corporation, for instance, in which even the Supreme Court has recognized legal personhood ''' 
Refers to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), during which Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad Wikipedia entry] Corporations are routinely recognized as "persons" in the law nowadays. For more on the recognition of corporation as legal persons, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Wikipedia entry on corporate personhood]. A recent documentary film, ''The Corporation'' (2003), tried to make the case that if a corporation is a "person," it has the personality of a psychopath.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 97-118

2007-02-11T20:38:09Z

Gobbag: /* Page 114 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 97==

'''the Rebellion''' 
What the North called the Civil War. [[ATD_1-25#Page_7|Another reference...]]

'''Tesla, Dr. Nikola''' (1856-1943) 
Tesla was a Serb-American inventor, engineer and physicist whose patents and theoretical work form the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, radio, and a bunch of other stuff. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Wikipedia entry] Tesla researched in Colorado Springs from May 1899 - January 1900, a location he chose because of the frequent thunderstorms, the high altitude, and the dryness of the air. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Colorado_Springs Wikipedia on Tesla at Colorado Springs].

Much of the the funding for his Colorado Springs laboratory came from Colonel John Jacob Astor. Tesla's friend and patent lawyer, Leonard E. Curtis, persuaded the El Paso Power Company to supply Tesla with all the electricity he wanted, free of charge. The arrangement ended the night Tesla's activities burned out the dynamo and the entire city lost power. [http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_colspr.html PBS: Tesla - Master of Lightning]

"Tesla logged in his diary on July 3, 1899 that a separate resonance transformer tuned to the same high frequency as a larger high-voltage resonance transformer would transceive energy from the larger coil, acting as a transmitter of wireless energy, which was used to confirm Tesla's patent for radio during later disputes in the courts. These air core high-frequency resonate coils were the predecessors of systems from radio to radar and medical magnetic resonance imaging devices." [http://www.crystalinks.com/tesla.html] This information was later used to confirm his patent for radio which he received posthumously in 1946, 3 years after his death. [http://www.resonanceresearch.com/nikola-tesla-coils-picture-colorado-1899-labratory.htm].

Pynchon confuses this 03 July 'vision', during a natural electrical storm, with later experimental generation of high voltages.

[http://www.teslasociety.com The Tesla Society] confusingly describes Tesla as a "Serbian-born American" but states his birthplace as Smiljan, Croatia.

'''Vectorist . . . by way of the Electricity''' 
Vector symbolism offers an economical way to describe electrical processes; electrical engineers still use vector algebra and vector analysis combined with concepts from complex number theory.

==Page 98==

'''a turbine generator located underneath a waterfall''' 
Not sitting there to catch the falling water. A waterfall is a convenient place for a power plant because you can get easy access to two elevations: take in water at the top, install your turbine at the bottom. The mention of penstocks and other plumbing farther down the page confirms that the flow is being captured in pipes at the head of the fall and run through a turbine at the bottom.

'''engineering students... from Cornell, Yale''' 
Cornell is Pynchon's alma mater, where he initially studied engineering. [[Thomas Pynchon|Pynchon bio]]

'''Maxwell''' 
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was a Scottish mathematical physicist among the pioneers of electromagnetism. Pynchon made use of his theoretical "Maxwell's Demon" in ''The Crying of Lot 49''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell Wikipedia entry]

'''Maxwell's ''Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism'' of 1873''' 
Full text of [http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmagne01maxwrich Volume 1] and [http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmag02maxwrich Volume 2] at the Internet Archive.

==Page 99==

'''"So is altitude transformed, continuously, to light"''' 
The potential energy of water at an altitude is realized when it falls, producing the flow of electricity required for the production of artificial light. 

'''"Hamilton had experienced at Brougham Bridge in Ireland"''' 
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) was an Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who made important contributions to the development of optics, dynamics, and algebra. His discovery of quaternions is perhaps his best known investigation. The discovery of quaternions reportedly occurred during a walk with his wife by the Royal Canal in Dublin. Upon having the inspiration for the formula, he promptly carved it into the side of the nearby Broom (or Brougham) Bridge. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton Wikipedia entry]

'''"a jump from one place to another"''' 
An allusion to quantum jump (or quantum leap), which would be proposed some years later as a model for the electron's transition between energy states within an atom and as the sole cause of the emission of electromagnetic radiation, including that of ''light'', by atoms. Interestingly enough, the term "quantum leap" would later become a standard vernacular term to describe abrupt advances. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_leap Wikipedia entry]

'''Pike's Peak or Bust!'''
The slogan of miners heading to Colorado during the Gold Rush of 1859.

'''swamping''' 
Menial work.

==Page 100==

'''Mr. Merriwell, we really need this touchdown''' 
An allusion to the fictional character Frank Merriwell, an adventuresome student at Yale and football hero, he was created by the pulp fiction writer Gilbert Patten, who wrote under the pen name Burt L. Standish. The first story, "Frank Merriwell: or, First Days at Fardale" appeared in ''Tip Top Weekly'' on April 18, 1896. Merriwell went on to appear in comic books, radio programs, and dime novels. As the passage suggests, Merriwell constituted an idealized picture of the east coast, old money elite. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Merriwell Wikipedia Entry on Frank Merriwell]

'''Yale''' 
This possible deal with the devil that Kit makes to get into Yale recalls the evil pact made to get Tyrone Slothrop into Harvard in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

'''Horsefeathers''' 
The title of a 1932 Marx Brothers film ("Horse Feathers"). Another possible indication for the promised Groucho Marx cameo. See also "ducksoup" (p.25)

'''Antietam''' 
1862.

'''substitute conscriptee''' 
The Enrollment Act of 1863 allowed draftees to pay $300 to a substitute who would serve for them. (See [http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenese/purchase.jpg here] for an example substitution form.) J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, James Mellon and future president Grover Cleveland all hired substitutes. Within a year the price had gone up to $1,100, however. [http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1994/winter/civil-war-draft-records.html Civil War Draft Records: Exemptions and Enrollments]

==Page 101==

'''Minié ball''' 
Prior to the development of the minie ball, rifles were not used in combat due to the difficulty in loading. The ammunition used by rifles was the same diameter as the barrel in order for the bullet to engage the groves of the rifled barrel. As a result the ball had to be forced into the barrel. The minie ball, originally designed by Captain Claude-Etienne Minie of France and improved on by manufacturers in the United States, changed warfare. Since the minie ball was smaller than the diameter of the barrel, it could be loaded quickly by dropping the bullet down the barrel. This conical lead bullet had two or three grooves and a conical cavity in its base. The gases, formed by the burning of powder once the firearm was fired, expanded the base of the bullet so that it engaged the rifling in the barrel. Thus, rifles could be loaded quickly and yet fired accurately; 620; [http://www.civilwar.si.edu/weapons_minieball.html From the Smithsonian website]

'''"far, far away"''' 
A nod to the opening lines of ''Star Wars''? “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." 
A similar episode is in Richard Powers' "Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance" (1985), in which a character affirms that he can get military radio communications thanks to a dental filling. Richard Powers has often been compared to Pynchon.

'''physical well-being''' 
The dichotomy of bodily and spiritual well-being appears in the [[The World is at Fault]] letter that Pynchon wrote in the early 60s.

'''"if it exists"''' 
Assuming this is c1882, when the Standard Oil Trust was formed, it was already well-known.

==Page 102==
'''ten gallons of coffee''' 
Major caffeine abuse also figured in to ''Mason & Dixon''.

'''With that kind of personal faith . . . handling snakes''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling Wikipedia] says snake-handling did not become a movement until the 1920s but was a sensational practice before the end of the 19th century. The requisite "personal faith" is defined in Mark 16:17-18: "And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name . . . [t]hey shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Southern Appalachia is now the epicenter of snake-handling.

'''''"Izvinite... Hvala"''''' 
'Excuse me'... 'Thank you' in Croatian. [http://www.bugeurope.com/essentials/croatian.html [cite]] Also in Serbian, though written in a different alphabet.

==Page 104==

'''"Tithing," Tesla said, "giving back to the day."''' Tesla's contempt for this tithing positions him as--wait for it--against the day.

==Page 105==

'''"not here on the desolate lee shore whose back country is death"''' 
Wonderful, just wonderful...

==Page 107==

Since this is 1899, the Chums should be six years older than they were in Chicago.

'''midwatch''' 
The time between midnight and 4 a.m. Another naval practice observed by the Chums.

'''A boy . . . under a baggy cap with its bill turned sidewise''' 
I can't identify this as to title or date, but the subject appeared in lithographs that hung in many homes in the first half of the 20th century. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 10:28, 5 February 2007 (PST)

'''Tesla device''' 
A radio. He received a patent for the radio after his death. The transmissions of July 3, 1899 (see Page 97, above) were used as evidence that he should be granted the patent.

:A member of the wiki has pointed out that Tesla recorded thunderstorm observations on that date but did not carry out transmissions.

'''Indian Ocean islands of Amsterdam and St.Paul''' 
As noted in the text, Indian Ocean Islands. Both are volcanic in origin. They remain without permanent residents.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_Saint-Paul Wikipedia article on St. Paul Island]

==Page 108==

'''islets vanished from the nautical charts''' 
Do features really vanish from charts? Could it be that their ''names'' were no longer recorded?

'''St. Masque''' 
This island's name may have been one of the ones to vanish.

'''huge underground construction''' 
The description calls to mind Boston's "Big Dig."

'''''Megaera''''' 
One of the Greek Furies. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaera [Wikipedia]]

'''"Curious," Chick said.''' 
His register of speech is very different from what we heard in earlier episodes.

==Page 109==

'''the volcano''' 
''Not'' Krakatoa. The Chums are in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

'''antipodal to Colorado Springs''' 
Amsterdam and St. Paul are, to within a few dozen miles, exactly on the opposite side of the Earth to the Springs. Because Tesla's work there wound up early in 1900, the antipodal point could not have held much interest after that.

'''mephitically seeping volcano''' 
"Mephitic" means foul-smelling.

'''blindness at the heart of a diamond''' 
This enigmatic imagery is reflected (no pun intended) in a few references: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=heart.of.a.diamond&as_brr=0 more] 

"where the light came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond. " (''Anne of Green Gables'', Chapt. 15, by Lucy Maud Montgomery) 

"It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond."'' A Story that is Untrue'' by Ambrose Bierce 

blindness seems not to be a positive with this metaphor. No light, a heart that cannot see. Diamonds = lightlessness.

==Page 110==
'''Nihilism''' 
Nihilism comes from the Latin ''nihil'', or nothing. It appears in the verb "annihilate", meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. Nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. Ivan Turgenev's ''Fathers and Sons'' (1862) popularized ''nihilism'' by his character Bazarov who preached a creed of total negation. In Russia, nihilism became identified with a loosely organized revolutionary movement (1860-1917) that rejected the authority of the state, church, and family. The movement advocated a social arrangement based on rationalism and materialism as the sole source of knowledge, and individual freedom as the highest goal. The movement eventually deteriorated into an ethos of subversion, destruction, and anarchy. And by the late 1870s, a nihilist was anyone associated with clandestine political groups advocating terrorism and assassination. ([http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm Nihilism]).

'''Platonic polyhedra''' 
In the Timaeus of Plato, the eponymous character claims, in what he calls his "likely story," that the cosmos was created by the gathering of triangles into regular solids which coincide with the four elements: the pyramid (fire), cube (earth), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and dodecahedron. The dodecahedron becomes associated with Æther.

'''Clarendons''' 
Clarendon is a serif typeface created in 1845 that was often used for wanted posters in the Old West. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarendon_%28typeface%29 Wikipedia entry, with a sample]

'''"Zumbledy bongbong," [Miles Blundell] called encouragingly, as the food flew. "Vamble, Vamble!"''' 
Miles's odd speech may be an allusion to that of the Muppets' Swedish Chef.

==Page 111==

'''unmix a failed sauce''' 
There is a folk belief, however, that mayonnaise and other egg-based sauces will separate during a thunderstorm.

'''In the U.S.A., it was almost the Fourth of July''' 
''Inconvenience'' is a day ahead of the U.S., being well west of the International Date Line.

'''Haymarket bomb . . . wonders of chemistry''' 
Cf. p. 79, "the widely admired Mexican principle of politics through chemistry."

==Page 112==

'''"the nature of the skyrocket's ascent"''' 
Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/dance-of-anarchy-and-change.html suggests] that this refers to ''Gravity's Rainbow.''

'''"Think, bloviators, think!"''' 
To bloviate means to speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner. CoC blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/dance-of-anarchy-and-change.html suggests] that this, coupled with the verbose allusion to ''Gravity's Rainbow'' above, is Pynchon's message to jargony commentators of his work, presumably in academia.

Presumably, us as well

'''President McKinley . . . naked woman . . . National Bird . . . something to eat . . . one of the Platonic polyhedra . . . draped female personage''' 
It is hard to see how the final figurehead choice is a "compromise" among these candidates.

==Page 113==

'''X.O.''' 
In many militaries' units, the executive officer (XO) is the second-in-command, reporting to the commanding officer (CO).

'''"contamination by the secular"''' 
Secular can be defined as "denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis." As the Chums have so far not been overtly religious, perhaps they mean secular in the spiritual sense?

Secular also means "worldly", as in, that which the Chums of Chance are literally above: 113: "That sort of bickering may be for ground people, but it is not for us."

'''Gloymbroognitz thidfusp''' 
Odd. Sounds like something from Adams' ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', but isn't. Anyone?
Famous, surreal Polish writer of the 20th Century, Gombrowitz, Wittold
'''Surabaya''' 
Today in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surabaya Wikipedia entry]

==Page 114==

'''Nernst lamps''' An early incandescent lamp invented by Hermann Nernst (1864-1941), which made use of a heated ceramic rod to produce light in ambient air (in contrast to Edison's incandescent, which required a vacuum to operate).

'''Dr. Mikimoto (Kokichi)''' Produced the first cultured pearl in 1893 in Toba, Japan. As he left school at 13 to help support his family, any Doctorate he may have obtained must have been honorary.

'''Iceland Spar''' 
See this handy "About Geology" page [http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blcalcite.htm], with an illustration demonstrating a spar's double-refraction effect on printed letters--remarkably like that on the cover of ATD! This kind of calcite has rhombohedral cleavage, because each of its faces is a rhombus, a warped rectangle in which none of the corners are square. A "spar" would be not the whole calcite crystal, but a cleavage fragment. Is each of the rectangular pages of ATD then a warped cleavage from some sort of crystalline whole, refracting its text in several directions at once? Of course, to the Chums the text message they receive from Upper Hierarchy has but one simple meaning. "Paramorphism" = the structural alteration of a mineral without any change in its chemical composition.

'''the limitless mischief of pearls''' 
A book's worth of superstitions exist around pearls. Pearls bring tears. The bride must wear pearls. The bride who wears pearls will be unhappy. If your pearl loses its luster, you are about to die. A pearl dissolved in wine is a poison. A pearl dissolved in wine is a love potion.

'''get up buoyancy''' 
A surface ship "gets up steam" in preparation for departure. Another naval or nautical analog.

'''Etienne-Louis Malus''' 
1775-1812, a French officer and mathematician whose work was predominantly concerned with light. He studied ray systems, and his theory on polarisation was published in 1809. His theory of the double refraction of light in crystals was published in 1810. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etienne-Louis_Malus Wikipedia] Malus is also the genus of the apple. Malus is best known for his law describing intensity of light as it passes through polarized materials. There are delicious metaphorical implications for any reader of a Pynchon novel.

'''pearls''' 
Probably meant to contrast the "blindness at the heart of a diamond" referred to on p. 109. Pynchon may want to call to mind ''The Scarlet Letter'', in which Pearl, the child produced by the union of the protagonist, Hester Prynne, and the Rev. Dimsdale, becomes a symbol of beauty derived from sin (there, and likely here, represented by the grain of sand around which the pearl forms).

'''Dr. Alden Vormance''' "
Vormance's surname may be meant to combine "Romance" and "worm," calling to mind the Romantic exuberance that motivated 19th century exploratory expeditions as well as the serpent of the Biblical expulsion story. 
Another Pynchonian "V" name and we know what Pynchon thinks of "Romantic exuberance". See GR, at least. And a remark in ATD [to find]. 
Alternatively, Vormance may be a conflation of the German prefix ''vor-'' (meaning "forward") with the -mancy combining form (e.g. necromancy) meaning prophecy--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 12:38, 11 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 115==
'''(Johannes) Kepler''' 
(1571-1630), mathematician best known for his laws of planetary motion, one of the foundations of Isaac Newton's theory of gravity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler Wikipedia]

'''Edmond Halley''' 
1656-1742, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Halley Halley] was an English physical scientist most remembered for the comet he which he predicted would return. In 1692 he proposed that the earth was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth hollow]. In 1698 he departed on a two year voyage as captain of the HMS Paramore in order to measure variations in the Earth's magnetic field. In 1716 he suggested timing the transit of Venus to determine the distance between the earth and the sun.

'''(Leonhard) Euler''' 
The method of traverse (pun ignored) by which the Chums proceed became known as a Symmes' Hole after John Cleeves Symmes who, in 1818 circulated a pamphlet arguing for the existence of such holes in the polar regions and further volunteered to lead an expedition to said regions.

Symmes' following lecture tours were further carried forth by one J.N. Reynolds. "[Edgar Allen] Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though no one has ever been able to identify the person to whom he referred." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_allen_poe Edgar Allen Poe's] first published short story, "Ms. Found in a Bottle" (1833) took, as its premise, the existence of Symmes' Holes: theoretical holes in the polar areas which led to a hollow interior.

==Page 116==

'''vatic''' 
Prophetic. [http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2004/10/21.html [def]]

'''the ship's nitro-lycopodium engines''' 
''Inconvenience'' has gone through a major refit, apparently: no more hydrogen power. Lycopodium consists of spores from a club moss, usually ''Lycopodium clavatum.'' It is a highly flammable yellowish powder. Photographers used it for flash illumination. In principle, an internal combustion engine can run on a powdered fuel, though difficulties abound in practice. The "nitro" part is a puzzle; nitromethane (called "nitro" or, in drag racing, simply "fuel") seems the most obvious reference. Do the ship's engines use a slurry of lycopodium in nitromethane? That would be a tricky fuel to handle. 
I don't think "nitro" refers to a particular, separate substance. The prefix nitro- indicates a substance whose molecules have the group NO2 attached to them. The oxygen in this group is easily released, with the result that nitro-compounds usually burn very rapidly and intensely, effectively having their own internal oxygen supply. Strictly the prefix should be applied to well defined molecular species such as nitromethane, nitrobenzene, etc, etc. However it is also used for complex biological substances treated with a nitrating agent such as nitric acid: nitrocotton (gun cotton) is a common example. Pynchon has probably invented nitro-lycopodium as a plausible though non-existent propellant, in the fashion we're accustomed to seeing with him.--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 06:57, 11 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 117==
'''royal court of Chthonica''' 
The adjective ''chthonic'' means "of the earth" or "of the underworld" and is often used to refer to the gods and other entities residing under the surface of the earth. The adjective is used creatively, and most famously, in the fictional works of H.P. Lovecraft ... a chief deity of his ficitional universe being Cthulhu.

'''Plutonia''' 
As above, a reference to the underworld and its inherent connotations of underground voyage, from the Aeneid to Christ to Dante to Tarzan, et al. The "Plutonist" movement, as opposed to the "Neptunist", was quite in vogue in the late 1800s, being a theory of geography which held that the interior heat of the earth was somehow responsible for various geological processes.

'''Tunbridge Wells''' 
[http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/disgusted-of-tunbridge-wells "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"] is an archetypal figure of conservative England whose correspondence can be found frequently in newspapers railing at the latest outrages of modernity. Tunbridge Wells briefly features in Gravity's Rainbow.

On whether this and the subterranean adventure may allude to ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' see [[Talk:ATD_97-118|Discussion]].

'''my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo''' 
Once again, the unseen narrator appears. By inference, the narrator is also the author of the various ''Chums of Chance...'' books referenced in ATD. This episode's also a little ''inter-textual'' scherzo: Poe (''Arthur Gordon Pym''), Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Pelucidar, ''Star Trek'', Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth... and Jeremiah Dixon's own underground journey in M&D. Doesn't Chick Counterfly sound rather Spockian here (cf. 115, bottom)?

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 97-118

2007-02-11T20:37:23Z

Gobbag: /* Page 114 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 97==

'''the Rebellion''' 
What the North called the Civil War. [[ATD_1-25#Page_7|Another reference...]]

'''Tesla, Dr. Nikola''' (1856-1943) 
Tesla was a Serb-American inventor, engineer and physicist whose patents and theoretical work form the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, radio, and a bunch of other stuff. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Wikipedia entry] Tesla researched in Colorado Springs from May 1899 - January 1900, a location he chose because of the frequent thunderstorms, the high altitude, and the dryness of the air. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Colorado_Springs Wikipedia on Tesla at Colorado Springs].

Much of the the funding for his Colorado Springs laboratory came from Colonel John Jacob Astor. Tesla's friend and patent lawyer, Leonard E. Curtis, persuaded the El Paso Power Company to supply Tesla with all the electricity he wanted, free of charge. The arrangement ended the night Tesla's activities burned out the dynamo and the entire city lost power. [http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_colspr.html PBS: Tesla - Master of Lightning]

"Tesla logged in his diary on July 3, 1899 that a separate resonance transformer tuned to the same high frequency as a larger high-voltage resonance transformer would transceive energy from the larger coil, acting as a transmitter of wireless energy, which was used to confirm Tesla's patent for radio during later disputes in the courts. These air core high-frequency resonate coils were the predecessors of systems from radio to radar and medical magnetic resonance imaging devices." [http://www.crystalinks.com/tesla.html] This information was later used to confirm his patent for radio which he received posthumously in 1946, 3 years after his death. [http://www.resonanceresearch.com/nikola-tesla-coils-picture-colorado-1899-labratory.htm].

Pynchon confuses this 03 July 'vision', during a natural electrical storm, with later experimental generation of high voltages.

[http://www.teslasociety.com The Tesla Society] confusingly describes Tesla as a "Serbian-born American" but states his birthplace as Smiljan, Croatia.

'''Vectorist . . . by way of the Electricity''' 
Vector symbolism offers an economical way to describe electrical processes; electrical engineers still use vector algebra and vector analysis combined with concepts from complex number theory.

==Page 98==

'''a turbine generator located underneath a waterfall''' 
Not sitting there to catch the falling water. A waterfall is a convenient place for a power plant because you can get easy access to two elevations: take in water at the top, install your turbine at the bottom. The mention of penstocks and other plumbing farther down the page confirms that the flow is being captured in pipes at the head of the fall and run through a turbine at the bottom.

'''engineering students... from Cornell, Yale''' 
Cornell is Pynchon's alma mater, where he initially studied engineering. [[Thomas Pynchon|Pynchon bio]]

'''Maxwell''' 
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was a Scottish mathematical physicist among the pioneers of electromagnetism. Pynchon made use of his theoretical "Maxwell's Demon" in ''The Crying of Lot 49''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell Wikipedia entry]

'''Maxwell's ''Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism'' of 1873''' 
Full text of [http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmagne01maxwrich Volume 1] and [http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmag02maxwrich Volume 2] at the Internet Archive.

==Page 99==

'''"So is altitude transformed, continuously, to light"''' 
The potential energy of water at an altitude is realized when it falls, producing the flow of electricity required for the production of artificial light. 

'''"Hamilton had experienced at Brougham Bridge in Ireland"''' 
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) was an Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who made important contributions to the development of optics, dynamics, and algebra. His discovery of quaternions is perhaps his best known investigation. The discovery of quaternions reportedly occurred during a walk with his wife by the Royal Canal in Dublin. Upon having the inspiration for the formula, he promptly carved it into the side of the nearby Broom (or Brougham) Bridge. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton Wikipedia entry]

'''"a jump from one place to another"''' 
An allusion to quantum jump (or quantum leap), which would be proposed some years later as a model for the electron's transition between energy states within an atom and as the sole cause of the emission of electromagnetic radiation, including that of ''light'', by atoms. Interestingly enough, the term "quantum leap" would later become a standard vernacular term to describe abrupt advances. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_leap Wikipedia entry]

'''Pike's Peak or Bust!'''
The slogan of miners heading to Colorado during the Gold Rush of 1859.

'''swamping''' 
Menial work.

==Page 100==

'''Mr. Merriwell, we really need this touchdown''' 
An allusion to the fictional character Frank Merriwell, an adventuresome student at Yale and football hero, he was created by the pulp fiction writer Gilbert Patten, who wrote under the pen name Burt L. Standish. The first story, "Frank Merriwell: or, First Days at Fardale" appeared in ''Tip Top Weekly'' on April 18, 1896. Merriwell went on to appear in comic books, radio programs, and dime novels. As the passage suggests, Merriwell constituted an idealized picture of the east coast, old money elite. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Merriwell Wikipedia Entry on Frank Merriwell]

'''Yale''' 
This possible deal with the devil that Kit makes to get into Yale recalls the evil pact made to get Tyrone Slothrop into Harvard in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

'''Horsefeathers''' 
The title of a 1932 Marx Brothers film ("Horse Feathers"). Another possible indication for the promised Groucho Marx cameo. See also "ducksoup" (p.25)

'''Antietam''' 
1862.

'''substitute conscriptee''' 
The Enrollment Act of 1863 allowed draftees to pay $300 to a substitute who would serve for them. (See [http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenese/purchase.jpg here] for an example substitution form.) J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, James Mellon and future president Grover Cleveland all hired substitutes. Within a year the price had gone up to $1,100, however. [http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1994/winter/civil-war-draft-records.html Civil War Draft Records: Exemptions and Enrollments]

==Page 101==

'''Minié ball''' 
Prior to the development of the minie ball, rifles were not used in combat due to the difficulty in loading. The ammunition used by rifles was the same diameter as the barrel in order for the bullet to engage the groves of the rifled barrel. As a result the ball had to be forced into the barrel. The minie ball, originally designed by Captain Claude-Etienne Minie of France and improved on by manufacturers in the United States, changed warfare. Since the minie ball was smaller than the diameter of the barrel, it could be loaded quickly by dropping the bullet down the barrel. This conical lead bullet had two or three grooves and a conical cavity in its base. The gases, formed by the burning of powder once the firearm was fired, expanded the base of the bullet so that it engaged the rifling in the barrel. Thus, rifles could be loaded quickly and yet fired accurately; 620; [http://www.civilwar.si.edu/weapons_minieball.html From the Smithsonian website]

'''"far, far away"''' 
A nod to the opening lines of ''Star Wars''? “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." 
A similar episode is in Richard Powers' "Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance" (1985), in which a character affirms that he can get military radio communications thanks to a dental filling. Richard Powers has often been compared to Pynchon.

'''physical well-being''' 
The dichotomy of bodily and spiritual well-being appears in the [[The World is at Fault]] letter that Pynchon wrote in the early 60s.

'''"if it exists"''' 
Assuming this is c1882, when the Standard Oil Trust was formed, it was already well-known.

==Page 102==
'''ten gallons of coffee''' 
Major caffeine abuse also figured in to ''Mason & Dixon''.

'''With that kind of personal faith . . . handling snakes''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling Wikipedia] says snake-handling did not become a movement until the 1920s but was a sensational practice before the end of the 19th century. The requisite "personal faith" is defined in Mark 16:17-18: "And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name . . . [t]hey shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Southern Appalachia is now the epicenter of snake-handling.

'''''"Izvinite... Hvala"''''' 
'Excuse me'... 'Thank you' in Croatian. [http://www.bugeurope.com/essentials/croatian.html [cite]] Also in Serbian, though written in a different alphabet.

==Page 104==

'''"Tithing," Tesla said, "giving back to the day."''' Tesla's contempt for this tithing positions him as--wait for it--against the day.

==Page 105==

'''"not here on the desolate lee shore whose back country is death"''' 
Wonderful, just wonderful...

==Page 107==

Since this is 1899, the Chums should be six years older than they were in Chicago.

'''midwatch''' 
The time between midnight and 4 a.m. Another naval practice observed by the Chums.

'''A boy . . . under a baggy cap with its bill turned sidewise''' 
I can't identify this as to title or date, but the subject appeared in lithographs that hung in many homes in the first half of the 20th century. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 10:28, 5 February 2007 (PST)

'''Tesla device''' 
A radio. He received a patent for the radio after his death. The transmissions of July 3, 1899 (see Page 97, above) were used as evidence that he should be granted the patent.

:A member of the wiki has pointed out that Tesla recorded thunderstorm observations on that date but did not carry out transmissions.

'''Indian Ocean islands of Amsterdam and St.Paul''' 
As noted in the text, Indian Ocean Islands. Both are volcanic in origin. They remain without permanent residents.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_Saint-Paul Wikipedia article on St. Paul Island]

==Page 108==

'''islets vanished from the nautical charts''' 
Do features really vanish from charts? Could it be that their ''names'' were no longer recorded?

'''St. Masque''' 
This island's name may have been one of the ones to vanish.

'''huge underground construction''' 
The description calls to mind Boston's "Big Dig."

'''''Megaera''''' 
One of the Greek Furies. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaera [Wikipedia]]

'''"Curious," Chick said.''' 
His register of speech is very different from what we heard in earlier episodes.

==Page 109==

'''the volcano''' 
''Not'' Krakatoa. The Chums are in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

'''antipodal to Colorado Springs''' 
Amsterdam and St. Paul are, to within a few dozen miles, exactly on the opposite side of the Earth to the Springs. Because Tesla's work there wound up early in 1900, the antipodal point could not have held much interest after that.

'''mephitically seeping volcano''' 
"Mephitic" means foul-smelling.

'''blindness at the heart of a diamond''' 
This enigmatic imagery is reflected (no pun intended) in a few references: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=heart.of.a.diamond&as_brr=0 more] 

"where the light came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond. " (''Anne of Green Gables'', Chapt. 15, by Lucy Maud Montgomery) 

"It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond."'' A Story that is Untrue'' by Ambrose Bierce 

blindness seems not to be a positive with this metaphor. No light, a heart that cannot see. Diamonds = lightlessness.

==Page 110==
'''Nihilism''' 
Nihilism comes from the Latin ''nihil'', or nothing. It appears in the verb "annihilate", meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. Nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. Ivan Turgenev's ''Fathers and Sons'' (1862) popularized ''nihilism'' by his character Bazarov who preached a creed of total negation. In Russia, nihilism became identified with a loosely organized revolutionary movement (1860-1917) that rejected the authority of the state, church, and family. The movement advocated a social arrangement based on rationalism and materialism as the sole source of knowledge, and individual freedom as the highest goal. The movement eventually deteriorated into an ethos of subversion, destruction, and anarchy. And by the late 1870s, a nihilist was anyone associated with clandestine political groups advocating terrorism and assassination. ([http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm Nihilism]).

'''Platonic polyhedra''' 
In the Timaeus of Plato, the eponymous character claims, in what he calls his "likely story," that the cosmos was created by the gathering of triangles into regular solids which coincide with the four elements: the pyramid (fire), cube (earth), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and dodecahedron. The dodecahedron becomes associated with Æther.

'''Clarendons''' 
Clarendon is a serif typeface created in 1845 that was often used for wanted posters in the Old West. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarendon_%28typeface%29 Wikipedia entry, with a sample]

'''"Zumbledy bongbong," [Miles Blundell] called encouragingly, as the food flew. "Vamble, Vamble!"''' 
Miles's odd speech may be an allusion to that of the Muppets' Swedish Chef.

==Page 111==

'''unmix a failed sauce''' 
There is a folk belief, however, that mayonnaise and other egg-based sauces will separate during a thunderstorm.

'''In the U.S.A., it was almost the Fourth of July''' 
''Inconvenience'' is a day ahead of the U.S., being well west of the International Date Line.

'''Haymarket bomb . . . wonders of chemistry''' 
Cf. p. 79, "the widely admired Mexican principle of politics through chemistry."

==Page 112==

'''"the nature of the skyrocket's ascent"''' 
Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/dance-of-anarchy-and-change.html suggests] that this refers to ''Gravity's Rainbow.''

'''"Think, bloviators, think!"''' 
To bloviate means to speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner. CoC blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/dance-of-anarchy-and-change.html suggests] that this, coupled with the verbose allusion to ''Gravity's Rainbow'' above, is Pynchon's message to jargony commentators of his work, presumably in academia.

Presumably, us as well

'''President McKinley . . . naked woman . . . National Bird . . . something to eat . . . one of the Platonic polyhedra . . . draped female personage''' 
It is hard to see how the final figurehead choice is a "compromise" among these candidates.

==Page 113==

'''X.O.''' 
In many militaries' units, the executive officer (XO) is the second-in-command, reporting to the commanding officer (CO).

'''"contamination by the secular"''' 
Secular can be defined as "denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis." As the Chums have so far not been overtly religious, perhaps they mean secular in the spiritual sense?

Secular also means "worldly", as in, that which the Chums of Chance are literally above: 113: "That sort of bickering may be for ground people, but it is not for us."

'''Gloymbroognitz thidfusp''' 
Odd. Sounds like something from Adams' ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', but isn't. Anyone?
Famous, surreal Polish writer of the 20th Century, Gombrowitz, Wittold
'''Surabaya''' 
Today in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surabaya Wikipedia entry]

==Page 114==

'''Nernst lamps''' An early incandescent lamp invented by Hermann Nernst (1864-1941), which made use of a heated ceramic rod to produce light in ambient air (in contrast to Edison's incandescent, which required a vacuum to operate).

'''Dr. Mikimoto (Kokichi)''' Produced the first cultured pearl in 1893 in Toba, Japan. As he left school at 13 to help support his family, any Doctorate he may have obtained must have been honorary.

'''Iceland Spar''' 
See this handy "About Geology" page [http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blcalcite.htm], with an illustration demonstrating a spar's double-refraction effect on printed letters--remarkably like that on the cover of ATD! This kind of calcite has rhombohedral cleavage, because each of its faces is a rhombus, a warped rectangle in which none of the corners are square. A "spar" would be not the whole calcite crystal, but a cleavage fragment. Is each of the rectangular pages of ATD then a warped cleavage from some sort of crystalline whole, refracting its text in several directions at once? Of course, to the Chums the text message they receive from Upper Hierarchy has but one simple meaning. "Paramorphism" = the structural alteration of a mineral without any change in its chemical composition.

'''the limitless mischief of pearls''' 
A book's worth of superstitions exist around pearls. Pearls bring tears. The bride must wear pearls. The bride who wears pearls will be unhappy. If your pearl loses its luster, you are about to die. A pearl dissolved in wine is a poison. A pearl dissolved in wine is a love potion.

'''get up buoyancy''' 
A surface ship "gets up steam" in preparation for departure. Another naval or nautical analog.

'''Etienne-Louis Malus''' 
1775-1812, a French officer and mathematician whose work was predominantly concerned with light. He studied ray systems, and his theory on polarisation was published in 1809. His theory of the double refraction of light in crystals was published in 1810. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etienne-Louis_Malus Wikipedia] Malus is also the genus of the apple. Malus is best known for his law describing intensity of light as it passes through polarized materials. There are delicious metaphorical implications for any reader of a Pynchon novel.

'''pearls''' 
Probably meant to contrast the "blindness at the heart of a diamond" referred to on p. 109. Pynchon may want to call to mind ''The Scarlet Letter'', in which Pearl, the child produced by the union of the protagonist, Hester Prynne, and the Rev. Dimsdale, becomes a symbol of beauty derived from sin (there, and likely here, represented by the grain of sand around which the pearl forms).

'''Dr. Alden Vormance''' "
Vormance's surname may be meant to combine "Romance" and "worm," calling to mind the Romantic exuberance that motivated 19th century exploratory expeditions as well as the serpent of the Biblical expulsion story. 
Another Pynchonian "V" name and we know what Pynchon thinks of "Romantic exuberance". See GR, at least. And a remark in ATD [to find]. 
Alternatively, Vormance may be a conflation of the German prefix ''vor-'' (meaning "forward") with the -mancy combining form (e.g. necromancy) meaning prophecy

==Page 115==
'''(Johannes) Kepler''' 
(1571-1630), mathematician best known for his laws of planetary motion, one of the foundations of Isaac Newton's theory of gravity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler Wikipedia]

'''Edmond Halley''' 
1656-1742, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Halley Halley] was an English physical scientist most remembered for the comet he which he predicted would return. In 1692 he proposed that the earth was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth hollow]. In 1698 he departed on a two year voyage as captain of the HMS Paramore in order to measure variations in the Earth's magnetic field. In 1716 he suggested timing the transit of Venus to determine the distance between the earth and the sun.

'''(Leonhard) Euler''' 
The method of traverse (pun ignored) by which the Chums proceed became known as a Symmes' Hole after John Cleeves Symmes who, in 1818 circulated a pamphlet arguing for the existence of such holes in the polar regions and further volunteered to lead an expedition to said regions.

Symmes' following lecture tours were further carried forth by one J.N. Reynolds. "[Edgar Allen] Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though no one has ever been able to identify the person to whom he referred." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_allen_poe Edgar Allen Poe's] first published short story, "Ms. Found in a Bottle" (1833) took, as its premise, the existence of Symmes' Holes: theoretical holes in the polar areas which led to a hollow interior.

==Page 116==

'''vatic''' 
Prophetic. [http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2004/10/21.html [def]]

'''the ship's nitro-lycopodium engines''' 
''Inconvenience'' has gone through a major refit, apparently: no more hydrogen power. Lycopodium consists of spores from a club moss, usually ''Lycopodium clavatum.'' It is a highly flammable yellowish powder. Photographers used it for flash illumination. In principle, an internal combustion engine can run on a powdered fuel, though difficulties abound in practice. The "nitro" part is a puzzle; nitromethane (called "nitro" or, in drag racing, simply "fuel") seems the most obvious reference. Do the ship's engines use a slurry of lycopodium in nitromethane? That would be a tricky fuel to handle. 
I don't think "nitro" refers to a particular, separate substance. The prefix nitro- indicates a substance whose molecules have the group NO2 attached to them. The oxygen in this group is easily released, with the result that nitro-compounds usually burn very rapidly and intensely, effectively having their own internal oxygen supply. Strictly the prefix should be applied to well defined molecular species such as nitromethane, nitrobenzene, etc, etc. However it is also used for complex biological substances treated with a nitrating agent such as nitric acid: nitrocotton (gun cotton) is a common example. Pynchon has probably invented nitro-lycopodium as a plausible though non-existent propellant, in the fashion we're accustomed to seeing with him.--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 06:57, 11 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 117==
'''royal court of Chthonica''' 
The adjective ''chthonic'' means "of the earth" or "of the underworld" and is often used to refer to the gods and other entities residing under the surface of the earth. The adjective is used creatively, and most famously, in the fictional works of H.P. Lovecraft ... a chief deity of his ficitional universe being Cthulhu.

'''Plutonia''' 
As above, a reference to the underworld and its inherent connotations of underground voyage, from the Aeneid to Christ to Dante to Tarzan, et al. The "Plutonist" movement, as opposed to the "Neptunist", was quite in vogue in the late 1800s, being a theory of geography which held that the interior heat of the earth was somehow responsible for various geological processes.

'''Tunbridge Wells''' 
[http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/disgusted-of-tunbridge-wells "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"] is an archetypal figure of conservative England whose correspondence can be found frequently in newspapers railing at the latest outrages of modernity. Tunbridge Wells briefly features in Gravity's Rainbow.

On whether this and the subterranean adventure may allude to ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' see [[Talk:ATD_97-118|Discussion]].

'''my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo''' 
Once again, the unseen narrator appears. By inference, the narrator is also the author of the various ''Chums of Chance...'' books referenced in ATD. This episode's also a little ''inter-textual'' scherzo: Poe (''Arthur Gordon Pym''), Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Pelucidar, ''Star Trek'', Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth... and Jeremiah Dixon's own underground journey in M&D. Doesn't Chick Counterfly sound rather Spockian here (cf. 115, bottom)?

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 119-148

2007-02-11T18:40:26Z

Gobbag: /* Page 130 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 121==

'''flying bridge''' 
On an ordinary aquatic ship, the flying bridge is an open deck atop the pilothouse for navigating in good weather. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_bridge [Wikipedia]]

'''to measure and map . . . that mysterious mathematical lattice-work''' 
A big research area in satellite and earth sciences. For example, if you know to utmost accuracy how gravity varies in near-Earth space, you can predict the orbits of satellites used for navigation and positioning (i.e., GPS).

'''"Ray-rush"''' 
Cf contemporary telecom bandwidth auctions. "Ray-rush" as "Gold-rush"

==Page 122==

'''transfiguration unceasing''' 
Not just continuous change, but specifically changes in the observer's face as the colors and intensities shift.

'''iceblink''' 
Lightening of the underside of clouds over ice. A related phenomenon is "water sky," darkening of clouds over water. [http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/basics/phenomena/water_sky.html Photos of both.]

'''souls bound to the planetary lines of force, swept pole to pole''' 
In ''V,'' Mondaugen was stationed in South Africa to record "sferics" or "whistlers," a form of radio interference due to charged particles traveling along Earth's lines of magnetic force. Here, the planet being hollow, the field may be continuous, north-south on the outside and then south-north on the inside, and the lines may represent some other, nonmagnetic field.

'''dazzle-painting''' 
A camouflage painting technique used on WWI ships.[http://www.gotouring.com/razzledazzle/articles/dazzle.html].

'''intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska''' 
Perhaps a reference to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) site in Gakonka, AK, which is ostensibly engaged in ionospheric research [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp (Wikipedia entry)]. Also suggestive of the ECHELON network [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON (Wikipedia entry)], comprising a number of signals intelligence sites, which are capable of intercepting a wide variety of communications signals throughout the world. Also, Pynchon often creates humorous or fanciful acronyms: W.A.S.T.E. (''The Crying of Lot 49''), A.C.H.T.U.N.G. (''Gravity's Rainbow''), etc.

'''Lloyd's of the high spectrum [...] the next fateful Lutine announcement.''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutine HMS Lutine] (Lutine translates as "the tease") was a ship commissioned in the French Royal Navy which was later given to the English Royal Navy during the Revolution. In 1799 she sank in the North Sea while blockading Holland; her hold was full of gold. Lloyd's of London, an independent insurance market still known for being willing to assume large insurance risks for the right price, had insured the gold, and paid the claim in full, acquiring nominal ownership of the still-unsalvaged cargo. The ship's bell was recovered in the mid-19th century and hangs to this day in the Underwriting Room at Lloyd's. For many years the the Lutine Bell was struck to announce news of an overdue ship: once if lost, twice if reported safe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_of_London#Miscellaneous [Wikipedia]]

'''last eclipse''' 
Possibly Pike's Peak, 1878? [http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhistory/SEhistory.html (partial table)]

==Page 123==

'''lookout telegraph''' 
Instead of attaching Pugnax's tail directly to a hammer that hits the gong, the gong is struck remotely via a telegraph line.

'''Igor Padzhitnoff''' 
The whole passage that introduces the rival airship captain is a play on Tetris. Igor's surname is similar to that of the creator of Tetris, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Pazhitnov Alexey Pazhitnov]. Also, the captain himself serves "a program of mischief", flies a ship called "The Great Game" and drops "bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his "signature," to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors."

The term 'Great Game' also refers to the intense geopolitical rivalry between the English and Russian empires over control of Central Asia during the whole of the 19th century [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game Wikipedia]. The period of this Great Game is thought to have ended in 1907, about the time of the book. The constant appearance of the Russians wherever the Chums go would appear to play on both this and on the coming Cold War conflict. The equation of all of these with Tetris suggests a common theme in all three 'non-violent' conflicts.

'''''Ice Pirates''''' 
This turn of phrase echoes the spoof [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ movie] of camraderie and dangerous "space herpes" that was released in 1984. There's no textual evidence that Pynchon means to refer to the movie, but the satirical humor and outlandish situations presented in the film might be attractive to someone with his sensibilities.

'''Tovarishchi Slutchainyi''' 
Tovarishchi translates as comrades; the literal translation of "Slutchainyi" is "accidental", leading to one possible reading of the phrase being: Chums of Chance. 
The phrase "Tovarishchi Slutchainyi" could also mean someone who is friends, but not intentionally, ie: perhaps people who are conscripted into a situation where they are forced to be communal. (Thanks to Anna Zaytseva for the idiomatic help!) 
A third reading is introduced when the homophonic correspondence between the final two syllables of Slutchainyi and Vice-President Cheney's name is noted. (Erhm, this doesn't work: the Russian word is sloo-CHIE-nee.)
:If the name were ''Tovarishchi Sluchainogo'' instead of as in the text, it would mean "Comrades of the Random," an exact parallel to the Chums.

'''trespassing upon their "sky-space" again''' 
A Soviet and Russian preoccupation, encroachment on their airspace by military or civilian flights.

'''nasal dislocation''' 
'Nose out of joint' = offended, feelings hurt.

==Page 124==

'''Na sobrat' ya po nebo!''' 
Randolph says "На собратья по небо." What I believe he means to say is
"Наши собратья по небу" or Nashi sobrat'ya po nebu, meaning "Our brothers/comrades of the sky"—perhaps a ritual greeting between the two groups. 
If aeronauts are like pilots, and they are--see ATD early---they feel and state a solidarity with others who fly. 
It is unlikely that Pynchon would make a mistake (the Russian in GR is correct) but Randolph might err. 
''Much'' of the Russian in ''GR'' is OK, not all, and somebody erred on page 123 when they made ''sluchainyi'' (singular) modify ''tovarishchi'' (plural).

==Page 125==
'''a ''roman-feuilleton'' by M. Eugène Sue''' 
A ''roman-feuilleton'' or serial novel. Eugène Sue (the "M." is for Monsieur = Mr.) was a French novelist roughly contemporary to Dumas père, with whom he has been compared. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Sue Wikipedia entry on Eugène Sue] Sue's most famous, which used to be a Modern Library title, is ''The Wandering Jew.''

'''red as a cursed ruby representing a third eye in the brow of some idol of the incomprehensible''' 
Seems too random to not be a reference to something...Very possibly; under the name T.Lopsang Rampa an Englishman published a thoroughly discredited spiritual autobiography called The Third Eye. The Third Eye, by Englishman Cyril Hoskin, a fantastic (and popular) tale of Tibetan spirit possession published in 1956; included telepathy and more.

In the 1940 version of "The Thief of Bagdad" the boy thief Abu (played by Sabu) must steal a magical "all-seeing eye" (ruby?) from the brow of a massive golden idol in a remote temple, in order to see - as in a crystal ball - the location of the Princess held in thrall by the evil vizier Jaffar.

'''Isafjörðr''' 
Town in the Westfjords of Iceland. Often spelled as Isafjörður, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ísafjörður Wikipedia]

'''The "extra man" of Arctic myth''' 

In his footnotes to "The Waste Land", T.S. Eliot glosses the lines:

''Who is the third who walks always beside you?'' 
''When I count, there are only you and I together'' 
''But when I look ahead up the white road'' 
''There is always another one walking beside you'' 

with:

"The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted." [http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/wasteland/thunder.html]

See also [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackletonexped/dispatches/19991110.html NOVA Online: Shackleton's Antarctic Odyssey]
"Shackleton, for his part, attributed their astonishing success to something else: 'I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.' Worsley and Crean, uncannily, felt the same. When T. S. Eliot read Shackleton's account, he was inspired to write the passage at the head of this dispatch."

'''the true face''' 
Possible variant on Taoism's "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao" [http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/the-X-that-can-be-Y-is-not-the-true-X.html [cf]]

'''bonzoline''' 
Ivory substitute made from celluloid, used for billiard balls. [http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=bonzoline [cite]]

==Page 126==
'''inukshuk''' 
An inukshuk is a stone landmark used as a milestone or directional marker by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. The Arctic Circle, dominated by permafrost, has few natural landmarks and thus the inuksuk was central to navigation across the barren tundra. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk Wikipedia entry on Inukshuk]

'''a truth beyond the secular''' 
Pynchon's use of the word "secular" is unusual. He previously had the Chums striving "to minimize contamination of the secular" on [[ATD_97-118#Page_113|page 113]], and here the Chums try to glimpse "some expression of a truth beyond the secular." Neither of these statements makes much sense with the normal definitions in use today for "secular"-- what could this mean?
: I think it is likely that secular means quotidian, "of the day", visible, as opposed to the invisible and mysterious which pervades ATD.
:Yes, that is a good extension of the original meaning: of the ages, of an age—as opposed to "eternal."

'''Étienne-Louis Malus''' 
See [[ATD_97-118#Page_114|page 114]].

'''376 feet, 6 inches''' 
The same length as the WWII-era [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_class_destroyer Fletcher Class Destroyer].

'''They passed around rumors--the Captain was insane again, ice-pirates were hunting the ''Malus'' like whalers...''' 
This phrase seems evocative of ''Moby Dick'', not only in the intimation that the Captain might be insane and the rumors that might result, but also with the explicit references to "whalers" in the subsequent clause, "the subtle insanity of Ahab." ''Moby Dick'' of course contains many scenes when two whaling ships come together to exchange messages. Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," features particularly sinister omens. It is safe to say, however, that none of the captains who meets Ahab quite resembles Padzhitnoff or has a "signature" resembling the game of Tetris! Pynchon once again lightly tweaks the "line" linking his body of work to Melville's. ([[ATD_57-80#Page_73|page 73]])

==Page 127==

'''Constance Penhallow''' 
Hallow: to set apart as holy, to honor greatly. Her name then pairs the virtue of constancy with honoring the pen. Note also that her grandson, mentioned a few lines below, is named Hunter and is an artist--In the hunt for the consecrated pen.

Alternatively, the prefix ''pen-'' is Gaelic for ''head, principal,'' or ''chief,'' in which case the name would mean "Holiest." It is also Latin for ''nearly, almost'' (as in "penultimate" or "peninsula"), rendering the name "nearly holy." Given the Nordic origin of the Penhallow family, and the Germanic etymology of "hallow," the Gaelic prefix may be more likely. On the other hand, the Latinate prefix suggests the state of preterition -- not quite holy and perhaps not saved...

I don't see "Nordic" (although their fortune is derived from Nordic commerce). The prefix ''Pen-'' in a surname marks the family as Cornish in origin.

'''walled garden''' 
In the Christian iconographic traditions of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, a walled garden, or ''hortus conclusus'' signified both/either the Garden of Eden and/or Mary's virginity.

'''Harald the Ruthless''' 
Harald III Sigurdsson (1015 – September 25, 1066), later surnamed Harald Hardråde (meaning ruthless) was the king of Norway from 1047 until 1066. Harald was the last great Viking king of Norway and his invasion of England and death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 proved a true watershed moment. It marked the end of the Viking age. In Norway, Harald's death also marked the beginning of the Christian era. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_III_of_Norway Wikipedia entry on Harald the Ruthless]

'''Ginnungagap''' 
In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap ("seeming emptiness" or "gaping gap") was a vast chasm that existed before the ordering of the world. To the north of Ginnungagap lay the intense cold of Niflheim, to the south the insufferable heat of Muspelheim. At the beginning of time, the two met in the Ginnungagap; and where the heat met the frost, the frost drops melted and formed the substance eitr, which quickened into life in the form of the giant Ymir, the father of all Frost giants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginnungagap Wikipedia entry on Ginnungagap]

==Page 128==

'''Bay of Röerford''' 
Does not seem to exist, at least with this spelling.

'''Hunter Penhallow''' 
See above, Constance Penhallow.

'''lower-eighties''' 
Latitudes from 80N to 85N (mainly Ellesmere Island). [http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm [map]]

'''love''' 
The word is rare in Pynchon's work. Here it is linked to separation, the human theme of the novel.

==Page 129==

'''Meat Olaf''' 
Anagram.
:As a lesson on the dangers of over-interpretation: I asked a Norwegian friend whether this is truly a Norwegian dish, to which he replied "no," making me feel stupid. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]

'''''¡Cuidado Cabrón! Salsa Explosiva La Original''''' 
Cabrón is an offensive word in Spanish meaning a guy who is an asshole/dick/cuckold, but friends can also call each other Cabrón in a joking manner. So, ''Watch-Out, Fucker! The Original Explosive Sauce''.
:There appears, in "''Explosiva La Original''," to be a suggestion of an originary explosion, i.e. the Big Bang.

==Page 130==

'''Tsangpo-Brahmaputra country''' 
The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.

'''Candlebrow University''' 
A fictional institute, created in the tradition of Lovecraft's Miskatonic University.

'''Quaternions''' 
In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry].

'''Fleetwood Vibe''' 
Fleetwood, like Scarsdale, is a wealthy suburb of New York City. Both communities are located in Westchester County, north of New York City.

'''bucket-shop''' 
Business designed to cheat people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop [Wikipedia]]

'''Flannelette''' 
Little washcloth. 
Flannelette is a soft fabric popular (in the UK at least) for pyjamas of a cosy but unsexy kind --[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 10:40, 11 February 2007 (PST)

'''Harriman... Schiff''' 
Railroad magnate and financier behind Northern Pacific Railroad, c1901. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Pacific_Railroad [Wikipedia]] [http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/eh_harriman.html Book on Harriman] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman Harriman Wikpedia Entry] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff Schiff Wikipedia Entry]

==Page 131==

'''"with oceangoing ships we left flat surfaces and went into Riemann space"''' 
One of Riemann's major contributions was the mathematics of manifolds, geometrical constructs that on a local scale appear to have fewer dimensions than they actually occupy. A standard example is the surface of the earth, which locally appears to be flat (2-dimensional), but in fact is curved (3-dimensional). Riemann's differential geometry quantifies the distortion produced by the curve of the surface.

'''Outer Hebrides''' 
or Western Isles comprise an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The population today is only 26,370, and there is no University.

==Page 132==

'''an ''additional axis'' whose unit is (-1)¹/²''' 
The usual form of representing a complex number ''z = b + ai'', (see below for explanation) graphically is by presenting its real part, ''b'', along the horizontal real axis and its imaginary part, ''a'', on the vertical imaginary (''additional'') axis of a Cartesian coordinate system. For a graph illustion of [http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jgraham/hypo/h13/images/image118.gif z = 1 + 2i].

'''complex number''' 
The complex number is of the form ''b + ai'', where ''a'' and ''b'' are real numbers and ''i'' is defined as the square root of -1, i.e. ''i'' = (-1)¹/². According to the definition, Cf page 133 Imaginary Number, ''ai'' is an imaginary number. Therefore, a complex number is a sum of real and imaginary numbers. Commonly, one use ''z'' to denote the whole expression ''b + ai'', i.e. ''z = b + ai''. And now ''z'' is called a complex number. Besides ''z'', the letter ''w'' is often used to denote complex numbers.

'''complex variable''' 
In mathematics, a 'variable' is a symbolic representation, usually a letter of the English (such as x and y), Greek or Roman alphabet, denoting an 'unkown' quantity which may vary during the course of calculation or investigation. For example, the speed of a jetliner,''v'', flying from Los Angeles to New York varies during the course of its flight. So,''v'' here is a variable. While 'c', the speed of light, unvaried, is a constant. In the algebraic equation y = ax² + bx + c where a, b and c are constants, x and y are ''variables''. When x and y involve complex numbers, then they are called complex variables.

'''''w = exp z''''' 
Here, ''w'' is a complex function, or a function of complex variables. ''exp z'' is the exponential function of ''z'' to the base ''e''. The expression ''w = exp z'' gives the relationship of the independent (complex) variable ''z'' to the dependent (complex) variable ''w'', i.e. mapping ''z'' onto ''w''. This relationship may not be one-to-one. The number ''e'' is the base of the natural logarithm, approximately equals to 2.71828. After ''Pi'', ''e'' is the most important
constant in mathematics. See the popular article about the history, definition and 10,000-place value of [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/e.html ''e''].

'''as Fitzgerald maintained, a shrinkage of dimension''' 
Irish physicist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_FitzGerald George FitzGerald] proposed a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction contraction of length] parallel to the direction of motion, to explain the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Quantitavely, the contraction is identical with the one predicted later by Einstein's special theory of relativity.

[http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/p200/str/str.html Here] is a concise and satisfying discussion of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century physics.

==Page 133==

'''Ynglingasaga''' 
See also Ynglinga Saga, or the story of the ancient Norse kings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ynglinga_saga Wikipedia entry]

'''''The Book of Iceland Spar''''', '''commonly described as "like the ''Ynglingasaga'' only different"''' 
" 'Thanatoid' means 'like death, only different.' " (''Vineland'', p. 170)

'''... even of days not yet transpired.''' 
Reminiscent of the Borges short story "The Library of Babel" about an "infinite library" which contains every possible book. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_babel Wikipedia entry].

'''Imaginary Number''' 
Imaginary number is of the form ''ai'', where ''a'' is a real number, and ''i'' is defined such that ''i² = -1'', 
i.e. i = (-1)¹/² (sqare root of minus 1). For example, ''-16¹/²'', (square root of minus 16) is an imaginary number since it can be expressed as ''4i'' by definition. In the novel ''The Da Vinci Code'' (2003), the character Robert Langdon jokes that character Sophie Neveu "believes in the imaginary number ''i'' because it helps her break code". In Issac Asimov's short story ''The Imaginary'' (1942), eccentric psychologist Tan Porus explains the behavior of a mysterious species of squid by using imaginary numbers in the equations which describe its psychology.

==Page 134==

'''that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen''' 
Seems to echo Merle Rideout's theory on the "double refraction" of Blinky Morgan and Ed Morley from p.62.

'''visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect''' 
Extraterrestrials, perhaps? "Visitors", in popular culture, is a term sometimes used to describe ETs. The alien race from the television miniseries ''V'' was named The Visitors. In the fictional world of ''South Park'', aliens are referred to as "visitors".

'''infinitesimal circle''' 
Cf p58. Reference to epsilon neighbourhoods, an essential tool in mathematical proofs.

'''bad ice''' 
Uneven ice formed by pressure, currents and wind in the dynamic Arctic environment

'''the sea-green, the ice-green, glass-green sea.''' 
In ''Ulysses'', James Joyce repeatedly describes the "snotgreen sea" (cf. Gabler edition, p. 4), itself an allusion to Homer's evocation of the "wine-dark sea". Cf., also, ATD, p.127: " . . . a green headland, sheer green walls of ice, the greenness nearest the water . . . . " In previous novels, Pynchon's use of color is almost always advised, as N.K. Hayles and M.B. Eiser note in their essay, "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow," in which green is frequently associated with the natural world, uncontaminated by humanity.

'''Narvik''' 
is a town in Norway, above the Arctic Circle.

==Page 135==

'''Mush-It-Away''' 
Takeaway (takeout fast food) for dogsledders.

==Page 136==

'''Venice of the Arctic''' 
Many cities have been compared with Venice in Italy, usually due to a high density of waterways (especially inner city canals) and/or maritime trade connections. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_nicknames#.27Venice_of_....27 Wikipedia entry on Venice of the X comparisons]

The Venice passage contains two themes that have appeared often in ''Against the Day'' so far: that of doubles (such as Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe, Randolph and his Russian counterpart, etc) and that of chance or randomness (the Chums, the meeting of Vibe and Walker, etc).

Also the double versions of the map of Asia, double versions of elements that can be seen when they are viewed with Iceland Spar.

And Pynchon seems to love Venice, a very positive place in one short story

'''Bauer-Grünewald''' 
Famous hotel in Venice.

'''kedgework''' 
A set of pilings used to move a ship by hauling on its mooring or anchoring lines.

==Page 138==

In the period of ATD, museums around the world sought spectacular meteorites, e.g. the Cape York meteorite recovered by Arctic explorer Robert Peary.
[http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/meteorites/what/capeyork.php]

'''Nesselrode pudding''' 
From ''The Penguin Book of Food and Drink'', ed. Paul Levy: 
"An iced pudding flavoured with chestnuts and dried fruit was invented by Monsieur Mony, chef for many years to the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, in Paris [...] Glacé fruit and peel were a further embellishment to the Nesselrode by the time Proust was old enough to notice such things.

==Page 139==
'''Dr. Counterfly... bearded''' 
Last seen as a boy with low rank. Six years have elapsed, 1893-1899.

'''lenses proved to be...Nicol prisms''' 
A Nicol Prism is a device to produce polarized light. It is made from a crystal of calcite (Iceland spar), which is cut along a precisely determined plane and then cemented back together with Canada balsam. A picture can be found [http://web.grinnell.edu/physics/PMuseum/Nicol%20Prisms.html here], detailed diagrams of Nicol and other polarizing prisms are availabe [http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/polpri.html here].

:Glasses like the ones described here are used for viewing 3-D movies.

'''''nunatak''''' 
A nunatak (plural: nunataks) is a mountain top that is not covered by land ice (see glaciation and ice age), and protrudes out of a surrounding glacier. The wildlife on a nunatak can be isolated by the glacier, just like an island is in the ocean. Nunataks are generally angular and jagged because of freeze-thaw weathering, and can be seen to contrast strongly with the softer contours of the glacially eroded land below if the glacier retreats. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunatak [Wikipedia]]

==Page 140==

'''a large brass speaking-trumpet''' 
Somewhat reminiscent of the ubiquitous W.A.S.T.E. symbolism in ''The Crying of Lot 49''.

[[image:Breguethands.jpg|thumb|Breguet hands|right]]'''Breguet-style arrowheads''' 
A distinctive fine watch of French design, usually with open circles ('moons') near the ends of the hands. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breguet_(watch) Wikipedia entry]

'''Poulsen's Telegraphone''' 
Invented in 1898, the first magnetic recording machine was patented by Valdemar Poulsen. The theory behind this machine was worked out theoretically by Oberlin Smith of the UK in 1888. Poulsen's machine recorded by passing a thin wire across an electromagnet. Each minute section of the wire would retain its electromagnetic charge, thus recording the sound. Sound could be both recorded and played back. Unfortunately, because the machine's output wasn't very loud and there was no way to amplify the signal, the Telegraphone was not much of a success. [http://www.wou.edu/las/creativearts/music/MUS%20206%20Text.pdf External link]

'''a human caul''' 
caul (Latin: Caput galeatum, literally, "head helmet") is a thin, filmy membrane, the remnants of the amniotic sac, that covers or partly covers the newborn mammal immediately after birth. It is also the membrane enclosing the paunch of mammals, particularly as in pork and mutton butchery. In butchery, the caul is used as offal. A third meaning refers to a type of women's headdress. The superstition attached to birth cauls has figured into numerous works of fiction, including ''David Copperfield,'' Stephen King's ''The Shining'' (wherein the child Danny Torrance, born with a caul, is possessed with the eponymous supernatural power), and Alan Moore's short graphic novel, ''The Birth Caul''.

==Page 141==

'''''camera lucida''''' 
A drawing aid sometimes used with an optical instrument; it is worthwhile to read the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida Wikipedia entry] in order to understand what's going on here.

'''misfortunes of certain Egyptologists''' 
Possibly a reference to the curse supposed to be attendant on the tomb of Tutankhamen, and upon which the death of George Herbert, who financed the expedition, was blamed. The tomb was breached in Feb 1923, though, and that seems later than this episode, so it may just be a reference to general myth. [http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/curse.htm [history]]

'''odalisque of the snows''' 
An odalisque was a virgin female slave who tended to the harem of the Turkish sultan. Numerous paintings of the 19th century portrayed them as reclining beauties. The most famous of these is Ingres' ''La grande odalisque'' (1814):

[[Image:odalisque.jpg|300px|center]]

'''mongoloid features''' 
Perhaps a reference to images of the Buddha, in which he is often seen reclining?

===Page 142===

'''we intrepid innocents . . . destiny."
This Vormance expedition calls to mind the 2004 film [http://imdb.com/title/tt0370263/ AVP: Alien Vs. Predator], in which an exploratory expedition funded by nefarious corporate elements discovers an ancient polar pyramid which they descend into, getting more than they bargain for in the process. Good stupid camp.

==Page 143==

'''Tungus''' 
Siberian language. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungusic_languages [Wikipedia]]

'''bilocation''' 
Doubtless to be an important concept in the novel, judging by the title of Part Three. Latin bis, twice, and locatio, place. Bilocation is as Pynchon explains, the ostensibly supernatural act of appearing or being in two or more locations simultaneously. Bilocation is claimed to have been experienced, and even practiced at will, by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, and magical adepts. Notably, Icelandic sagas also speak of warriors who were able to fall into a trance and appear thousands of miles away in battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation Wikipedia on bilocation] Is also obviously related to the physical properties of Iceland Spar.

'''Christian Time''' 
That is, linear time, a concept first introduced by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo St. Augustine of Hippo] (354-430), in his autobiographical [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/confessions/confessions.html ''Confessions'']. Augustine argued that the inevitability and singularity of Christ's return demanded that all history must be viewed as a linear progression toward the apocalypse and the ascendancy of Christ on Earth, after which time would effectively stop, an event described as the "End of Days." From this decidedly deterministic view of time, Augustine derived his doctrine of predestination, that is, of a world in which each soul, even as it is born, is already pre-defined as saved or unsaved. While the Catholic Church would eventually reject this doctrine, the protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin resurrected it, and it became an important part of Calvinist theology, notably as practiced by the Puritans.

==Page 144==

'''"we measured, and remeasured, and each time the dimensions kept coming out different - not just slightly so but drastically."''' 
Cf. Mark Danielewski's debut novel ''House Of Leaves'' (2000), where a house interior dimensions keep changing, while the exterior remains unaltered. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_leaves Wikipedia entry]

'''"its gaze had remained directed solely, personally, to each of us, no matter where we stood or moved."''' 
Supposedly a standard feature of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church portrait-icons.

'''Returned to harbor at last''' 
Not in Iceland but in the city from where the expedition first sailed.

==Page 145==

'''upstate security of Matteawan''' 
I.e., committed to the Matteawan Asylum at Fishkill, N.Y. Does this leave any doubt as to the name of the great city?

[[image:Evangelion.jpg|right|175px|thumb|The apocalyptic giant of light unearthed in the Arctic in Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'''the man-shaped light shall not deliver you''' 
Reminiscent of the famous Japanese anime ''Neon Genesis Evangelion'' (1994-95), in which mankind unearths a mysterious creature from the Arctic ice that appears as a man-shaped giant of light, gets out of man's control and triggers an apocalypse. Probably not an intentional reference, but if Pynchon plays Tetris, who knows? 
:-sinister variant of GR's Kirghiz Light? Those who see the Light find their words dismissed "as the meaningless sounds of a baby" (GR 358) just as witnesses to ATD's light are sent to the sanitorium. Note also the line's similarity to the Aqyn's warning from GR: "And the Light will never find you." (359)

c.f. the man-shaped light on 153

==Page 146==

'''lines''' 
The description of the single-file line at the train station basically describes current security conditions at American airports.
A single line (i.e. linear thinking) does not seem to be a 'positive' in the Pynchon world. (See too the slaughterhouse on page 10.)

'''Explorers' Club''' 
Apparently in South Africa (the famous NYC one wasn't founded until 1904).
:In Washington, D.C., though this doesn't help with the timing since the D.C. chapter wasn't formed till 1924. But "in Africa," "out there" and the word "British" in referring to the poet laureate—these all rule out Africa as the site.

'''Dr. Jim's little adventure''' 
A reference to the so-called "Jameson Raid" spearheaded by Dr. L. S. Jameson. The raid was intended to trigger an uprising among the British expatriate workers (the Uitlanders) in the Transvaal, but failed, and instead served to further destabilize the region and catalyze the Second Boer War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid Wikipedia entry] (From Wikipedia: “The Jameson Raid (December 29, 1895 - January 2, 1896) was a raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895-96. It was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so. The raid was ineffective and no uprising took place, but it did much to bring about the Second Boer War and the Second Matabele War.”)

'''"War any moment"''' 
The Second Boer War started in October 1899. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War [Wikipedia]]

'''the British poet-laureate’s commemorative verse''' 
Reference to Alfred Austin. From Wikipedia: “As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Austin Wikipedia entry]

The questionable rhyme referred to is from that “hasty poem” --

::They went across the veldt,
::As hard as they could pelt.

==Page 147==

'''Borchardt''' 
[[image:borchardt.jpg|thumb|200px|Borchardt pistol|right]]1894 forerunner of Luger.

'''Nansen''' 
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (1861-1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat. Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner. In 1893, he sailed to the Arctic in a ship which was deliberately allowed to drift north through the sea ice, a journey that took more than three years. During this first crossing of the Arctic Ocean the expedition became the first to discover the existence of a deep polar basin. When, after more than one year in the ice it became apparent that the ship would not reach the North Pole, Nansen continued north on foot and, in April 1895, reached 86° 14´ N, the highest latitude then attained. The two men were forced to spend the winter, surviving on walrus blubber and polar bear meat. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen Wikipedia entry on Nansen] Cf. p. 138.

'''Suppose it were to happen to us . . . an innocence they knew how to circumvent''' 
"Art" is supposed, among other things, to help us interpret our world. This passage is Art as brilliant and hardnosed as anything Goya or Picasso or Shostakovich ever created. Just one man's opinion. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 15:19, 5 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 148==

'''"Evolution. Ape evolves to man, well, what's the next step - human to what? Some ''compound organism'', the American Corporation, for instance"''' 
Cf. the following excerpt from William Gibson's 1981 short story "New Rose Hotel":

:Imagine an alien, Fox once said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has a look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged.
:The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.

'''the American Corporation, for instance, in which even the Supreme Court has recognized legal personhood ''' 
Refers to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), during which Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad Wikipedia entry] Corporations are routinely recognized as "persons" in the law nowadays. For more on the recognition of corporation as legal persons, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood Wikipedia entry on corporate personhood]. A recent documentary film, ''The Corporation'' (2003), tried to make the case that if a corporation is a "person," it has the personality of a psychopath.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 97-118

2007-02-11T14:57:39Z

Gobbag: /* Page 116 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 97==

'''the Rebellion''' 
What the North called the Civil War. [[ATD_1-25#Page_7|Another reference...]]

'''Tesla, Dr. Nikola''' (1856-1943) 
Tesla was a Serb-American inventor, engineer and physicist whose patents and theoretical work form the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, radio, and a bunch of other stuff. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Wikipedia entry] Tesla researched in Colorado Springs from May 1899 - January 1900, a location he chose because of the frequent thunderstorms, the high altitude, and the dryness of the air. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Colorado_Springs Wikipedia on Tesla at Colorado Springs].

Much of the the funding for his Colorado Springs laboratory came from Colonel John Jacob Astor. Tesla's friend and patent lawyer, Leonard E. Curtis, persuaded the El Paso Power Company to supply Tesla with all the electricity he wanted, free of charge. The arrangement ended the night Tesla's activities burned out the dynamo and the entire city lost power. [http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_colspr.html PBS: Tesla - Master of Lightning]

"Tesla logged in his diary on July 3, 1899 that a separate resonance transformer tuned to the same high frequency as a larger high-voltage resonance transformer would transceive energy from the larger coil, acting as a transmitter of wireless energy, which was used to confirm Tesla's patent for radio during later disputes in the courts. These air core high-frequency resonate coils were the predecessors of systems from radio to radar and medical magnetic resonance imaging devices." [http://www.crystalinks.com/tesla.html] This information was later used to confirm his patent for radio which he received posthumously in 1946, 3 years after his death. [http://www.resonanceresearch.com/nikola-tesla-coils-picture-colorado-1899-labratory.htm].

Pynchon confuses this 03 July 'vision', during a natural electrical storm, with later experimental generation of high voltages.

[http://www.teslasociety.com The Tesla Society] confusingly describes Tesla as a "Serbian-born American" but states his birthplace as Smiljan, Croatia.

'''Vectorist . . . by way of the Electricity''' 
Vector symbolism offers an economical way to describe electrical processes; electrical engineers still use vector algebra and vector analysis combined with concepts from complex number theory.

==Page 98==

'''a turbine generator located underneath a waterfall''' 
Not sitting there to catch the falling water. A waterfall is a convenient place for a power plant because you can get easy access to two elevations: take in water at the top, install your turbine at the bottom. The mention of penstocks and other plumbing farther down the page confirms that the flow is being captured in pipes at the head of the fall and run through a turbine at the bottom.

'''engineering students... from Cornell, Yale''' 
Cornell is Pynchon's alma mater, where he initially studied engineering. [[Thomas Pynchon|Pynchon bio]]

'''Maxwell''' 
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was a Scottish mathematical physicist among the pioneers of electromagnetism. Pynchon made use of his theoretical "Maxwell's Demon" in ''The Crying of Lot 49''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell Wikipedia entry]

'''Maxwell's ''Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism'' of 1873''' 
Full text of [http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmagne01maxwrich Volume 1] and [http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmag02maxwrich Volume 2] at the Internet Archive.

==Page 99==

'''"So is altitude transformed, continuously, to light"''' 
The potential energy of water at an altitude is realized when it falls, producing the flow of electricity required for the production of artificial light. 

'''"Hamilton had experienced at Brougham Bridge in Ireland"''' 
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) was an Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who made important contributions to the development of optics, dynamics, and algebra. His discovery of quaternions is perhaps his best known investigation. The discovery of quaternions reportedly occurred during a walk with his wife by the Royal Canal in Dublin. Upon having the inspiration for the formula, he promptly carved it into the side of the nearby Broom (or Brougham) Bridge. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton Wikipedia entry]

'''"a jump from one place to another"''' 
An allusion to quantum jump (or quantum leap), which would be proposed some years later as a model for the electron's transition between energy states within an atom and as the sole cause of the emission of electromagnetic radiation, including that of ''light'', by atoms. Interestingly enough, the term "quantum leap" would later become a standard vernacular term to describe abrupt advances. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_leap Wikipedia entry]

'''Pike's Peak or Bust!'''
The slogan of miners heading to Colorado during the Gold Rush of 1859.

'''swamping''' 
Menial work.

==Page 100==

'''Mr. Merriwell, we really need this touchdown''' 
An allusion to the fictional character Frank Merriwell, an adventuresome student at Yale and football hero, he was created by the pulp fiction writer Gilbert Patten, who wrote under the pen name Burt L. Standish. The first story, "Frank Merriwell: or, First Days at Fardale" appeared in ''Tip Top Weekly'' on April 18, 1896. Merriwell went on to appear in comic books, radio programs, and dime novels. As the passage suggests, Merriwell constituted an idealized picture of the east coast, old money elite. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Merriwell Wikipedia Entry on Frank Merriwell]

'''Yale''' 
This possible deal with the devil that Kit makes to get into Yale recalls the evil pact made to get Tyrone Slothrop into Harvard in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

'''Horsefeathers''' 
The title of a 1932 Marx Brothers film ("Horse Feathers"). Another possible indication for the promised Groucho Marx cameo. See also "ducksoup" (p.25)

'''Antietam''' 
1862.

'''substitute conscriptee''' 
The Enrollment Act of 1863 allowed draftees to pay $300 to a substitute who would serve for them. (See [http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenese/purchase.jpg here] for an example substitution form.) J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, James Mellon and future president Grover Cleveland all hired substitutes. Within a year the price had gone up to $1,100, however. [http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1994/winter/civil-war-draft-records.html Civil War Draft Records: Exemptions and Enrollments]

==Page 101==

'''Minié ball''' 
Prior to the development of the minie ball, rifles were not used in combat due to the difficulty in loading. The ammunition used by rifles was the same diameter as the barrel in order for the bullet to engage the groves of the rifled barrel. As a result the ball had to be forced into the barrel. The minie ball, originally designed by Captain Claude-Etienne Minie of France and improved on by manufacturers in the United States, changed warfare. Since the minie ball was smaller than the diameter of the barrel, it could be loaded quickly by dropping the bullet down the barrel. This conical lead bullet had two or three grooves and a conical cavity in its base. The gases, formed by the burning of powder once the firearm was fired, expanded the base of the bullet so that it engaged the rifling in the barrel. Thus, rifles could be loaded quickly and yet fired accurately; 620; [http://www.civilwar.si.edu/weapons_minieball.html From the Smithsonian website]

'''"far, far away"''' 
A nod to the opening lines of ''Star Wars''? “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." 
A similar episode is in Richard Powers' "Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance" (1985), in which a character affirms that he can get military radio communications thanks to a dental filling. Richard Powers has often been compared to Pynchon.

'''physical well-being''' 
The dichotomy of bodily and spiritual well-being appears in the [[The World is at Fault]] letter that Pynchon wrote in the early 60s.

'''"if it exists"''' 
Assuming this is c1882, when the Standard Oil Trust was formed, it was already well-known.

==Page 102==
'''ten gallons of coffee''' 
Major caffeine abuse also figured in to ''Mason & Dixon''.

'''With that kind of personal faith . . . handling snakes''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling Wikipedia] says snake-handling did not become a movement until the 1920s but was a sensational practice before the end of the 19th century. The requisite "personal faith" is defined in Mark 16:17-18: "And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name . . . [t]hey shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Southern Appalachia is now the epicenter of snake-handling.

'''''"Izvinite... Hvala"''''' 
'Excuse me'... 'Thank you' in Croatian. [http://www.bugeurope.com/essentials/croatian.html [cite]] Also in Serbian, though written in a different alphabet.

==Page 104==

'''"Tithing," Tesla said, "giving back to the day."''' Tesla's contempt for this tithing positions him as--wait for it--against the day.

==Page 105==

'''"not here on the desolate lee shore whose back country is death"''' 
Wonderful, just wonderful...

==Page 107==

Since this is 1899, the Chums should be six years older than they were in Chicago.

'''midwatch''' 
The time between midnight and 4 a.m. Another naval practice observed by the Chums.

'''A boy . . . under a baggy cap with its bill turned sidewise''' 
I can't identify this as to title or date, but the subject appeared in lithographs that hung in many homes in the first half of the 20th century. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 10:28, 5 February 2007 (PST)

'''Tesla device''' 
A radio. He received a patent for the radio after his death. The transmissions of July 3, 1899 (see Page 97, above) were used as evidence that he should be granted the patent.

:A member of the wiki has pointed out that Tesla recorded thunderstorm observations on that date but did not carry out transmissions.

'''Indian Ocean islands of Amsterdam and St.Paul''' 
As noted in the text, Indian Ocean Islands. Both are volcanic in origin. They remain without permanent residents.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_Saint-Paul Wikipedia article on St. Paul Island]

==Page 108==

'''islets vanished from the nautical charts''' 
Do features really vanish from charts? Could it be that their ''names'' were no longer recorded?

'''St. Masque''' 
This island's name may have been one of the ones to vanish.

'''huge underground construction''' 
The description calls to mind Boston's "Big Dig."

'''''Megaera''''' 
One of the Greek Furies. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaera [Wikipedia]]

'''"Curious," Chick said.''' 
His register of speech is very different from what we heard in earlier episodes.

==Page 109==

'''the volcano''' 
''Not'' Krakatoa. The Chums are in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

'''antipodal to Colorado Springs''' 
Amsterdam and St. Paul are, to within a few dozen miles, exactly on the opposite side of the Earth to the Springs. Because Tesla's work there wound up early in 1900, the antipodal point could not have held much interest after that.

'''mephitically seeping volcano''' 
"Mephitic" means foul-smelling.

'''blindness at the heart of a diamond''' 
This enigmatic imagery is reflected (no pun intended) in a few references: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=heart.of.a.diamond&as_brr=0 more] 

"where the light came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond. " (''Anne of Green Gables'', Chapt. 15, by Lucy Maud Montgomery) 

"It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond."'' A Story that is Untrue'' by Ambrose Bierce 

blindness seems not to be a positive with this metaphor. No light, a heart that cannot see. Diamonds = lightlessness.

==Page 110==
'''Nihilism''' 
Nihilism comes from the Latin ''nihil'', or nothing. It appears in the verb "annihilate", meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. Nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. Ivan Turgenev's ''Fathers and Sons'' (1862) popularized ''nihilism'' by his character Bazarov who preached a creed of total negation. In Russia, nihilism became identified with a loosely organized revolutionary movement (1860-1917) that rejected the authority of the state, church, and family. The movement advocated a social arrangement based on rationalism and materialism as the sole source of knowledge, and individual freedom as the highest goal. The movement eventually deteriorated into an ethos of subversion, destruction, and anarchy. And by the late 1870s, a nihilist was anyone associated with clandestine political groups advocating terrorism and assassination. ([http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm Nihilism]).

'''Platonic polyhedra''' 
In the Timaeus of Plato, the eponymous character claims, in what he calls his "likely story," that the cosmos was created by the gathering of triangles into regular solids which coincide with the four elements: the pyramid (fire), cube (earth), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and dodecahedron. The dodecahedron becomes associated with Æther.

'''Clarendons''' 
Clarendon is a serif typeface created in 1845 that was often used for wanted posters in the Old West. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarendon_%28typeface%29 Wikipedia entry, with a sample]

'''"Zumbledy bongbong," [Miles Blundell] called encouragingly, as the food flew. "Vamble, Vamble!"''' 
Miles's odd speech may be an allusion to that of the Muppets' Swedish Chef.

==Page 111==

'''unmix a failed sauce''' 
There is a folk belief, however, that mayonnaise and other egg-based sauces will separate during a thunderstorm.

'''In the U.S.A., it was almost the Fourth of July''' 
''Inconvenience'' is a day ahead of the U.S., being well west of the International Date Line.

'''Haymarket bomb . . . wonders of chemistry''' 
Cf. p. 79, "the widely admired Mexican principle of politics through chemistry."

==Page 112==

'''"the nature of the skyrocket's ascent"''' 
Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/dance-of-anarchy-and-change.html suggests] that this refers to ''Gravity's Rainbow.''

'''"Think, bloviators, think!"''' 
To bloviate means to speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner. CoC blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/dance-of-anarchy-and-change.html suggests] that this, coupled with the verbose allusion to ''Gravity's Rainbow'' above, is Pynchon's message to jargony commentators of his work, presumably in academia.

Presumably, us as well

'''President McKinley . . . naked woman . . . National Bird . . . something to eat . . . one of the Platonic polyhedra . . . draped female personage''' 
It is hard to see how the final figurehead choice is a "compromise" among these candidates.

==Page 113==

'''X.O.''' 
In many militaries' units, the executive officer (XO) is the second-in-command, reporting to the commanding officer (CO).

'''"contamination by the secular"''' 
Secular can be defined as "denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis." As the Chums have so far not been overtly religious, perhaps they mean secular in the spiritual sense?

Secular also means "worldly", as in, that which the Chums of Chance are literally above: 113: "That sort of bickering may be for ground people, but it is not for us."

'''Gloymbroognitz thidfusp''' 
Odd. Sounds like something from Adams' ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', but isn't. Anyone?
Famous, surreal Polish writer of the 20th Century, Gombrowitz, Wittold
'''Surabaya''' 
Today in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surabaya Wikipedia entry]

==Page 114==

'''Nernst lamps''' An early incandescent lamp invented by Hermann Nernst (1864-1941), which made use of a heated ceramic rod to produce light in ambient air (in contrast to Edison's incandescent, which required a vacuum to operate).

'''Dr. Mikimoto (Kokichi)''' Produced the first cultured pearl in 1893 in Toba, Japan. As he left school at 13 to help support his family, any Doctorate he may have obtained must have been honorary.

'''Iceland Spar''' 
See this handy "About Geology" page [http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blcalcite.htm], with an illustration demonstrating a spar's double-refraction effect on printed letters--remarkably like that on the cover of ATD! This kind of calcite has rhombohedral cleavage, because each of its faces is a rhombus, a warped rectangle in which none of the corners are square. A "spar" would be not the whole calcite crystal, but a cleavage fragment. Is each of the rectangular pages of ATD then a warped cleavage from some sort of crystalline whole, refracting its text in several directions at once? Of course, to the Chums the text message they receive from Upper Hierarchy has but one simple meaning. "Paramorphism" = the structural alteration of a mineral without any change in its chemical composition.

'''the limitless mischief of pearls''' 
A book's worth of superstitions exist around pearls. Pearls bring tears. The bride must wear pearls. The bride who wears pearls will be unhappy. If your pearl loses its luster, you are about to die. A pearl dissolved in wine is a poison. A pearl dissolved in wine is a love potion.

'''get up buoyancy''' 
A surface ship "gets up steam" in preparation for departure. Another naval or nautical analog.

'''Etienne-Louis Malus''' 
1775-1812, a French officer and mathematician whose work was predominantly concerned with light. He studied ray systems, and his theory on polarisation was published in 1809. His theory of the double refraction of light in crystals was published in 1810. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etienne-Louis_Malus Wikipedia] Malus is also the genus of the apple. Malus is best known for his law describing intensity of light as it passes through polarized materials. There are delicious metaphorical implications for any reader of a Pynchon novel.

'''pearls''' 
Probably meant to contrast the "blindness at the heart of a diamond" referred to on p. 109. Pynchon may want to call to mind ''The Scarlet Letter'', in which Pearl, the child produced by the union of the protagonist, Hester Prynne, and the Rev. Dimsdale, becomes a symbol of beauty derived from sin (there, and likely here, represented by the grain of sand around which the pearl forms).

'''Dr. Alden Vormance''' "
Vormance's surname may be meant to combine "Romance" and "worm," calling to mind the Romantic exuberance that motivated 19th century exploratory expeditions as well as the serpent of the Biblical expulsion story. 
Another Pynchonian "V" name and we know what Pynchon thinks of "Romantic exuberance". See GR, at least. And a remark in ATD [to find].

==Page 115==
'''(Johannes) Kepler''' 
(1571-1630), mathematician best known for his laws of planetary motion, one of the foundations of Isaac Newton's theory of gravity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler Wikipedia]

'''Edmond Halley''' 
1656-1742, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Halley Halley] was an English physical scientist most remembered for the comet he which he predicted would return. In 1692 he proposed that the earth was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth hollow]. In 1698 he departed on a two year voyage as captain of the HMS Paramore in order to measure variations in the Earth's magnetic field. In 1716 he suggested timing the transit of Venus to determine the distance between the earth and the sun.

'''(Leonhard) Euler''' 
The method of traverse (pun ignored) by which the Chums proceed became known as a Symmes' Hole after John Cleeves Symmes who, in 1818 circulated a pamphlet arguing for the existence of such holes in the polar regions and further volunteered to lead an expedition to said regions.

Symmes' following lecture tours were further carried forth by one J.N. Reynolds. "[Edgar Allen] Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though no one has ever been able to identify the person to whom he referred." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_allen_poe Edgar Allen Poe's] first published short story, "Ms. Found in a Bottle" (1833) took, as its premise, the existence of Symmes' Holes: theoretical holes in the polar areas which led to a hollow interior.

==Page 116==

'''vatic''' 
Prophetic. [http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2004/10/21.html [def]]

'''the ship's nitro-lycopodium engines''' 
''Inconvenience'' has gone through a major refit, apparently: no more hydrogen power. Lycopodium consists of spores from a club moss, usually ''Lycopodium clavatum.'' It is a highly flammable yellowish powder. Photographers used it for flash illumination. In principle, an internal combustion engine can run on a powdered fuel, though difficulties abound in practice. The "nitro" part is a puzzle; nitromethane (called "nitro" or, in drag racing, simply "fuel") seems the most obvious reference. Do the ship's engines use a slurry of lycopodium in nitromethane? That would be a tricky fuel to handle. 
I don't think "nitro" refers to a particular, separate substance. The prefix nitro- indicates a substance whose molecules have the group NO2 attached to them. The oxygen in this group is easily released, with the result that nitro-compounds usually burn very rapidly and intensely, effectively having their own internal oxygen supply. Strictly the prefix should be applied to well defined molecular species such as nitromethane, nitrobenzene, etc, etc. However it is also used for complex biological substances treated with a nitrating agent such as nitric acid: nitrocotton (gun cotton) is a common example. Pynchon has probably invented nitro-lycopodium as a plausible though non-existent propellant, in the fashion we're accustomed to seeing with him.--[[User:Gobbag|Gobbag]] 06:57, 11 February 2007 (PST)

==Page 117==
'''royal court of Chthonica''' 
The adjective ''chthonic'' means "of the earth" or "of the underworld" and is often used to refer to the gods and other entities residing under the surface of the earth. The adjective is used creatively, and most famously, in the fictional works of H.P. Lovecraft ... a chief deity of his ficitional universe being Cthulhu.

'''Plutonia''' 
As above, a reference to the underworld and its inherent connotations of underground voyage, from the Aeneid to Christ to Dante to Tarzan, et al. The "Plutonist" movement, as opposed to the "Neptunist", was quite in vogue in the late 1800s, being a theory of geography which held that the interior heat of the earth was somehow responsible for various geological processes.

'''Tunbridge Wells''' 
[http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/disgusted-of-tunbridge-wells "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"] is an archetypal figure of conservative England whose correspondence can be found frequently in newspapers railing at the latest outrages of modernity. Tunbridge Wells briefly features in Gravity's Rainbow.

On whether this and the subterranean adventure may allude to ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' see [[Talk:ATD_97-118|Discussion]].

'''my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo''' 
Once again, the unseen narrator appears. By inference, the narrator is also the author of the various ''Chums of Chance...'' books referenced in ATD. This episode's also a little ''inter-textual'' scherzo: Poe (''Arthur Gordon Pym''), Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Pelucidar, ''Star Trek'', Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth... and Jeremiah Dixon's own underground journey in M&D. Doesn't Chick Counterfly sound rather Spockian here (cf. 115, bottom)?

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 97-118

2007-02-11T14:53:22Z

Gobbag: /* Page 116 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 97==

'''the Rebellion''' 
What the North called the Civil War. [[ATD_1-25#Page_7|Another reference...]]

'''Tesla, Dr. Nikola''' (1856-1943) 
Tesla was a Serb-American inventor, engineer and physicist whose patents and theoretical work form the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, radio, and a bunch of other stuff. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Wikipedia entry] Tesla researched in Colorado Springs from May 1899 - January 1900, a location he chose because of the frequent thunderstorms, the high altitude, and the dryness of the air. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Colorado_Springs Wikipedia on Tesla at Colorado Springs].

Much of the the funding for his Colorado Springs laboratory came from Colonel John Jacob Astor. Tesla's friend and patent lawyer, Leonard E. Curtis, persuaded the El Paso Power Company to supply Tesla with all the electricity he wanted, free of charge. The arrangement ended the night Tesla's activities burned out the dynamo and the entire city lost power. [http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_colspr.html PBS: Tesla - Master of Lightning]

"Tesla logged in his diary on July 3, 1899 that a separate resonance transformer tuned to the same high frequency as a larger high-voltage resonance transformer would transceive energy from the larger coil, acting as a transmitter of wireless energy, which was used to confirm Tesla's patent for radio during later disputes in the courts. These air core high-frequency resonate coils were the predecessors of systems from radio to radar and medical magnetic resonance imaging devices." [http://www.crystalinks.com/tesla.html] This information was later used to confirm his patent for radio which he received posthumously in 1946, 3 years after his death. [http://www.resonanceresearch.com/nikola-tesla-coils-picture-colorado-1899-labratory.htm].

Pynchon confuses this 03 July 'vision', during a natural electrical storm, with later experimental generation of high voltages.

[http://www.teslasociety.com The Tesla Society] confusingly describes Tesla as a "Serbian-born American" but states his birthplace as Smiljan, Croatia.

'''Vectorist . . . by way of the Electricity''' 
Vector symbolism offers an economical way to describe electrical processes; electrical engineers still use vector algebra and vector analysis combined with concepts from complex number theory.

==Page 98==

'''a turbine generator located underneath a waterfall''' 
Not sitting there to catch the falling water. A waterfall is a convenient place for a power plant because you can get easy access to two elevations: take in water at the top, install your turbine at the bottom. The mention of penstocks and other plumbing farther down the page confirms that the flow is being captured in pipes at the head of the fall and run through a turbine at the bottom.

'''engineering students... from Cornell, Yale''' 
Cornell is Pynchon's alma mater, where he initially studied engineering. [[Thomas Pynchon|Pynchon bio]]

'''Maxwell''' 
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was a Scottish mathematical physicist among the pioneers of electromagnetism. Pynchon made use of his theoretical "Maxwell's Demon" in ''The Crying of Lot 49''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell Wikipedia entry]

'''Maxwell's ''Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism'' of 1873''' 
Full text of [http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmagne01maxwrich Volume 1] and [http://www.archive.org/details/electricandmag02maxwrich Volume 2] at the Internet Archive.

==Page 99==

'''"So is altitude transformed, continuously, to light"''' 
The potential energy of water at an altitude is realized when it falls, producing the flow of electricity required for the production of artificial light. 

'''"Hamilton had experienced at Brougham Bridge in Ireland"''' 
William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) was an Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who made important contributions to the development of optics, dynamics, and algebra. His discovery of quaternions is perhaps his best known investigation. The discovery of quaternions reportedly occurred during a walk with his wife by the Royal Canal in Dublin. Upon having the inspiration for the formula, he promptly carved it into the side of the nearby Broom (or Brougham) Bridge. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton Wikipedia entry]

'''"a jump from one place to another"''' 
An allusion to quantum jump (or quantum leap), which would be proposed some years later as a model for the electron's transition between energy states within an atom and as the sole cause of the emission of electromagnetic radiation, including that of ''light'', by atoms. Interestingly enough, the term "quantum leap" would later become a standard vernacular term to describe abrupt advances. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_leap Wikipedia entry]

'''Pike's Peak or Bust!'''
The slogan of miners heading to Colorado during the Gold Rush of 1859.

'''swamping''' 
Menial work.

==Page 100==

'''Mr. Merriwell, we really need this touchdown''' 
An allusion to the fictional character Frank Merriwell, an adventuresome student at Yale and football hero, he was created by the pulp fiction writer Gilbert Patten, who wrote under the pen name Burt L. Standish. The first story, "Frank Merriwell: or, First Days at Fardale" appeared in ''Tip Top Weekly'' on April 18, 1896. Merriwell went on to appear in comic books, radio programs, and dime novels. As the passage suggests, Merriwell constituted an idealized picture of the east coast, old money elite. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Merriwell Wikipedia Entry on Frank Merriwell]

'''Yale''' 
This possible deal with the devil that Kit makes to get into Yale recalls the evil pact made to get Tyrone Slothrop into Harvard in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

'''Horsefeathers''' 
The title of a 1932 Marx Brothers film ("Horse Feathers"). Another possible indication for the promised Groucho Marx cameo. See also "ducksoup" (p.25)

'''Antietam''' 
1862.

'''substitute conscriptee''' 
The Enrollment Act of 1863 allowed draftees to pay $300 to a substitute who would serve for them. (See [http://www.rootsweb.com/~nygenese/purchase.jpg here] for an example substitution form.) J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, James Mellon and future president Grover Cleveland all hired substitutes. Within a year the price had gone up to $1,100, however. [http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1994/winter/civil-war-draft-records.html Civil War Draft Records: Exemptions and Enrollments]

==Page 101==

'''Minié ball''' 
Prior to the development of the minie ball, rifles were not used in combat due to the difficulty in loading. The ammunition used by rifles was the same diameter as the barrel in order for the bullet to engage the groves of the rifled barrel. As a result the ball had to be forced into the barrel. The minie ball, originally designed by Captain Claude-Etienne Minie of France and improved on by manufacturers in the United States, changed warfare. Since the minie ball was smaller than the diameter of the barrel, it could be loaded quickly by dropping the bullet down the barrel. This conical lead bullet had two or three grooves and a conical cavity in its base. The gases, formed by the burning of powder once the firearm was fired, expanded the base of the bullet so that it engaged the rifling in the barrel. Thus, rifles could be loaded quickly and yet fired accurately; 620; [http://www.civilwar.si.edu/weapons_minieball.html From the Smithsonian website]

'''"far, far away"''' 
A nod to the opening lines of ''Star Wars''? “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." 
A similar episode is in Richard Powers' "Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance" (1985), in which a character affirms that he can get military radio communications thanks to a dental filling. Richard Powers has often been compared to Pynchon.

'''physical well-being''' 
The dichotomy of bodily and spiritual well-being appears in the [[The World is at Fault]] letter that Pynchon wrote in the early 60s.

'''"if it exists"''' 
Assuming this is c1882, when the Standard Oil Trust was formed, it was already well-known.

==Page 102==
'''ten gallons of coffee''' 
Major caffeine abuse also figured in to ''Mason & Dixon''.

'''With that kind of personal faith . . . handling snakes''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling Wikipedia] says snake-handling did not become a movement until the 1920s but was a sensational practice before the end of the 19th century. The requisite "personal faith" is defined in Mark 16:17-18: "And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name . . . [t]hey shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Southern Appalachia is now the epicenter of snake-handling.

'''''"Izvinite... Hvala"''''' 
'Excuse me'... 'Thank you' in Croatian. [http://www.bugeurope.com/essentials/croatian.html [cite]] Also in Serbian, though written in a different alphabet.

==Page 104==

'''"Tithing," Tesla said, "giving back to the day."''' Tesla's contempt for this tithing positions him as--wait for it--against the day.

==Page 105==

'''"not here on the desolate lee shore whose back country is death"''' 
Wonderful, just wonderful...

==Page 107==

Since this is 1899, the Chums should be six years older than they were in Chicago.

'''midwatch''' 
The time between midnight and 4 a.m. Another naval practice observed by the Chums.

'''A boy . . . under a baggy cap with its bill turned sidewise''' 
I can't identify this as to title or date, but the subject appeared in lithographs that hung in many homes in the first half of the 20th century. --[[User:Volver|Volver]] 10:28, 5 February 2007 (PST)

'''Tesla device''' 
A radio. He received a patent for the radio after his death. The transmissions of July 3, 1899 (see Page 97, above) were used as evidence that he should be granted the patent.

:A member of the wiki has pointed out that Tesla recorded thunderstorm observations on that date but did not carry out transmissions.

'''Indian Ocean islands of Amsterdam and St.Paul''' 
As noted in the text, Indian Ocean Islands. Both are volcanic in origin. They remain without permanent residents.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_Saint-Paul Wikipedia article on St. Paul Island]

==Page 108==

'''islets vanished from the nautical charts''' 
Do features really vanish from charts? Could it be that their ''names'' were no longer recorded?

'''St. Masque''' 
This island's name may have been one of the ones to vanish.

'''huge underground construction''' 
The description calls to mind Boston's "Big Dig."

'''''Megaera''''' 
One of the Greek Furies. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaera [Wikipedia]]

'''"Curious," Chick said.''' 
His register of speech is very different from what we heard in earlier episodes.

==Page 109==

'''the volcano''' 
''Not'' Krakatoa. The Chums are in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

'''antipodal to Colorado Springs''' 
Amsterdam and St. Paul are, to within a few dozen miles, exactly on the opposite side of the Earth to the Springs. Because Tesla's work there wound up early in 1900, the antipodal point could not have held much interest after that.

'''mephitically seeping volcano''' 
"Mephitic" means foul-smelling.

'''blindness at the heart of a diamond''' 
This enigmatic imagery is reflected (no pun intended) in a few references: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=heart.of.a.diamond&as_brr=0 more] 

"where the light came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond. " (''Anne of Green Gables'', Chapt. 15, by Lucy Maud Montgomery) 

"It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond."'' A Story that is Untrue'' by Ambrose Bierce 

blindness seems not to be a positive with this metaphor. No light, a heart that cannot see. Diamonds = lightlessness.

==Page 110==
'''Nihilism''' 
Nihilism comes from the Latin ''nihil'', or nothing. It appears in the verb "annihilate", meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. Nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. Ivan Turgenev's ''Fathers and Sons'' (1862) popularized ''nihilism'' by his character Bazarov who preached a creed of total negation. In Russia, nihilism became identified with a loosely organized revolutionary movement (1860-1917) that rejected the authority of the state, church, and family. The movement advocated a social arrangement based on rationalism and materialism as the sole source of knowledge, and individual freedom as the highest goal. The movement eventually deteriorated into an ethos of subversion, destruction, and anarchy. And by the late 1870s, a nihilist was anyone associated with clandestine political groups advocating terrorism and assassination. ([http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm Nihilism]).

'''Platonic polyhedra''' 
In the Timaeus of Plato, the eponymous character claims, in what he calls his "likely story," that the cosmos was created by the gathering of triangles into regular solids which coincide with the four elements: the pyramid (fire), cube (earth), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and dodecahedron. The dodecahedron becomes associated with Æther.

'''Clarendons''' 
Clarendon is a serif typeface created in 1845 that was often used for wanted posters in the Old West. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarendon_%28typeface%29 Wikipedia entry, with a sample]

'''"Zumbledy bongbong," [Miles Blundell] called encouragingly, as the food flew. "Vamble, Vamble!"''' 
Miles's odd speech may be an allusion to that of the Muppets' Swedish Chef.

==Page 111==

'''unmix a failed sauce''' 
There is a folk belief, however, that mayonnaise and other egg-based sauces will separate during a thunderstorm.

'''In the U.S.A., it was almost the Fourth of July''' 
''Inconvenience'' is a day ahead of the U.S., being well west of the International Date Line.

'''Haymarket bomb . . . wonders of chemistry''' 
Cf. p. 79, "the widely admired Mexican principle of politics through chemistry."

==Page 112==

'''"the nature of the skyrocket's ascent"''' 
Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/dance-of-anarchy-and-change.html suggests] that this refers to ''Gravity's Rainbow.''

'''"Think, bloviators, think!"''' 
To bloviate means to speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner. CoC blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/dance-of-anarchy-and-change.html suggests] that this, coupled with the verbose allusion to ''Gravity's Rainbow'' above, is Pynchon's message to jargony commentators of his work, presumably in academia.

Presumably, us as well

'''President McKinley . . . naked woman . . . National Bird . . . something to eat . . . one of the Platonic polyhedra . . . draped female personage''' 
It is hard to see how the final figurehead choice is a "compromise" among these candidates.

==Page 113==

'''X.O.''' 
In many militaries' units, the executive officer (XO) is the second-in-command, reporting to the commanding officer (CO).

'''"contamination by the secular"''' 
Secular can be defined as "denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis." As the Chums have so far not been overtly religious, perhaps they mean secular in the spiritual sense?

Secular also means "worldly", as in, that which the Chums of Chance are literally above: 113: "That sort of bickering may be for ground people, but it is not for us."

'''Gloymbroognitz thidfusp''' 
Odd. Sounds like something from Adams' ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', but isn't. Anyone?
Famous, surreal Polish writer of the 20th Century, Gombrowitz, Wittold
'''Surabaya''' 
Today in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surabaya Wikipedia entry]

==Page 114==

'''Nernst lamps''' An early incandescent lamp invented by Hermann Nernst (1864-1941), which made use of a heated ceramic rod to produce light in ambient air (in contrast to Edison's incandescent, which required a vacuum to operate).

'''Dr. Mikimoto (Kokichi)''' Produced the first cultured pearl in 1893 in Toba, Japan. As he left school at 13 to help support his family, any Doctorate he may have obtained must have been honorary.

'''Iceland Spar''' 
See this handy "About Geology" page [http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/blcalcite.htm], with an illustration demonstrating a spar's double-refraction effect on printed letters--remarkably like that on the cover of ATD! This kind of calcite has rhombohedral cleavage, because each of its faces is a rhombus, a warped rectangle in which none of the corners are square. A "spar" would be not the whole calcite crystal, but a cleavage fragment. Is each of the rectangular pages of ATD then a warped cleavage from some sort of crystalline whole, refracting its text in several directions at once? Of course, to the Chums the text message they receive from Upper Hierarchy has but one simple meaning. "Paramorphism" = the structural alteration of a mineral without any change in its chemical composition.

'''the limitless mischief of pearls''' 
A book's worth of superstitions exist around pearls. Pearls bring tears. The bride must wear pearls. The bride who wears pearls will be unhappy. If your pearl loses its luster, you are about to die. A pearl dissolved in wine is a poison. A pearl dissolved in wine is a love potion.

'''get up buoyancy''' 
A surface ship "gets up steam" in preparation for departure. Another naval or nautical analog.

'''Etienne-Louis Malus''' 
1775-1812, a French officer and mathematician whose work was predominantly concerned with light. He studied ray systems, and his theory on polarisation was published in 1809. His theory of the double refraction of light in crystals was published in 1810. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etienne-Louis_Malus Wikipedia] Malus is also the genus of the apple. Malus is best known for his law describing intensity of light as it passes through polarized materials. There are delicious metaphorical implications for any reader of a Pynchon novel.

'''pearls''' 
Probably meant to contrast the "blindness at the heart of a diamond" referred to on p. 109. Pynchon may want to call to mind ''The Scarlet Letter'', in which Pearl, the child produced by the union of the protagonist, Hester Prynne, and the Rev. Dimsdale, becomes a symbol of beauty derived from sin (there, and likely here, represented by the grain of sand around which the pearl forms).

'''Dr. Alden Vormance''' "
Vormance's surname may be meant to combine "Romance" and "worm," calling to mind the Romantic exuberance that motivated 19th century exploratory expeditions as well as the serpent of the Biblical expulsion story.

==Page 115==
'''(Johannes) Kepler''' 
(1571-1630), mathematician best known for his laws of planetary motion, one of the foundations of Isaac Newton's theory of gravity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler Wikipedia]

'''Edmond Halley''' 
1656-1742, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Halley Halley] was an English physical scientist most remembered for the comet he which he predicted would return. In 1692 he proposed that the earth was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth hollow]. In 1698 he departed on a two year voyage as captain of the HMS Paramore in order to measure variations in the Earth's magnetic field. In 1716 he suggested timing the transit of Venus to determine the distance between the earth and the sun.

'''(Leonhard) Euler''' 
The method of traverse (pun ignored) by which the Chums proceed became known as a Symmes' Hole after John Cleeves Symmes who, in 1818 circulated a pamphlet arguing for the existence of such holes in the polar regions and further volunteered to lead an expedition to said regions.

Symmes' following lecture tours were further carried forth by one J.N. Reynolds. "[Edgar Allen] Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though no one has ever been able to identify the person to whom he referred." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_allen_poe Edgar Allen Poe's] first published short story, "Ms. Found in a Bottle" (1833) took, as its premise, the existence of Symmes' Holes: theoretical holes in the polar areas which led to a hollow interior.

==Page 116==

'''vatic''' 
Prophetic. [http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2004/10/21.html [def]]

'''the ship's nitro-lycopodium engines''' 
''Inconvenience'' has gone through a major refit, apparently: no more hydrogen power. Lycopodium consists of spores from a club moss, usually ''Lycopodium clavatum.'' It is a highly flammable yellowish powder. Photographers used it for flash illumination. In principle, an internal combustion engine can run on a powdered fuel, though difficulties abound in practice. The "nitro" part is a puzzle; nitromethane (called "nitro" or, in drag racing, simply "fuel") seems the most obvious reference. Do the ship's engines use a slurry of lycopodium in nitromethane? That would be a tricky fuel to handle. 
I don't think "nitro" refers to a particular, separate substance. The prefix nitro- indicates a substance whose molecules have the group NO2 attached to them. The oxygen in this group is easily released, with the result that nitro-compounds usually burn very rapidly and intensely, effectively having their own internal oxygen supply. Strictly the prefix should be applied to well defined molecular species such as nitromethane, nitrobenzene, etc, etc. However it is also used for complex biological substances treated with a nitrating agent such as nitric acid: nitrocotton (gun cotton) is a common example. Pynchon has probably invented nitro-lycopodium as a plausible though non-existent propellant, in the fashion we're accustomed to seeing with him.

==Page 117==
'''royal court of Chthonica''' 
The adjective ''chthonic'' means "of the earth" or "of the underworld" and is often used to refer to the gods and other entities residing under the surface of the earth. The adjective is used creatively, and most famously, in the fictional works of H.P. Lovecraft ... a chief deity of his ficitional universe being Cthulhu.

'''Plutonia''' 
As above, a reference to the underworld and its inherent connotations of underground voyage, from the Aeneid to Christ to Dante to Tarzan, et al. The "Plutonist" movement, as opposed to the "Neptunist", was quite in vogue in the late 1800s, being a theory of geography which held that the interior heat of the earth was somehow responsible for various geological processes.

'''Tunbridge Wells''' 
[http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/disgusted-of-tunbridge-wells "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"] is an archetypal figure of conservative England whose correspondence can be found frequently in newspapers railing at the latest outrages of modernity. Tunbridge Wells briefly features in Gravity's Rainbow.

On whether this and the subterranean adventure may allude to ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' see [[Talk:ATD_97-118|Discussion]].

'''my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo''' 
Once again, the unseen narrator appears. By inference, the narrator is also the author of the various ''Chums of Chance...'' books referenced in ATD. This episode's also a little ''inter-textual'' scherzo: Poe (''Arthur Gordon Pym''), Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Pelucidar, ''Star Trek'', Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth... and Jeremiah Dixon's own underground journey in M&D. Doesn't Chick Counterfly sound rather Spockian here (cf. 115, bottom)?

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

Page 88

2007-01-21T17:57:48Z

Gobbag: New page 88 - westward drift

==Page 88==

'''westward drift''' 
Webb Traverse's wanderings are referred to as "this westward drift". The phrase is probably not accidental: in scientific circles "westward drift" is used for either of two geophysical phenomena: the gradual westward [http://home.jesus.ox.ac.uk/~dacheson/res2.html [movement of the magnetic north pole]] and the westward [http://bulletin.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/118/1-2/199 [rotation of the outer layers of the Earth]] (the lithosphere) relative to the inner layers.